The Assassin Drone
by Zelofheda
Summary: Lucas North goes undercover to find out who's kidnapped the son of an engineer to force her into smuggling a top secret government drone out of the company where she works.
1. Chapter 1

Title: The Assassin Drone

Author: zelofheda

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Spooks, Lucas North, and anybody else that you recognize all belong to BBC and Kudos, I am simply borrowing them with no intent to profit.

Summary: Lucas North goes undercover to find out who has kidnapped the young son of an engineer in order to blackmail her into smuggling a top secret government drone out of the company where she works.

Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated, in fact, any feedback at all is greatly appreciated!

xxxxx

_Any minute now_, Lucas thought, leaning back in his chair and watching Lina put the entire spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. It was a hot Saturday afternoon in June, and many establishments in London, including ice cream parlours, had put tables and chairs outside on the pavement. For their weekly date, Lucas had suggested that Lina come savour a cold treat to combat the unusually sunny weather. Now she slowly and luxuriously sucked the ice cream from the spoon, and when it was empty, she dipped it again into the glass bowl. Lucas followed her movements with anticipation. She hadn't yet found the treasure, and there wasn't much ice cream left. _Any minute … now_!

"Ewww!" Lina ripped the spoon from her mouth, bent over, and, to Lucas' horror, spat the mouthful onto the pavement. The diamond ring that he had so carefully arranged to be included in her ice cream sundae landed in a wet, unappetizing blob between two tables, where a passing customer promptly stepped on it.

"That is disgusting!" Lina cried, spitting again. Her Russian accent became more pronounced, as it always did when she was excited or upset. "Somebody dropped their wedding ring in my ice cream and I put it in my mouth!"

Alarmed by her words, everyone around them stopped eating, staring first at Lina and then down at their own gelato creations as though expecting used jewelry, or worse, to rise up from the depths. Lucas leaned over and plucked the ring from the pavement. "No, Lina, stop. You've got it all wrong."

Lina pressed her serviette to her mouth. "I think I am going to be _sick_!"

"Lina, listen to me, please. This wasn't an accident." Straightening up, Lucas used his other hand to fumble for his own serviette. "I put the ring there."

Staring at him, Lina said, "What?"

"I put the ring there." Lucas repeating, knowing that his unintended audience was hanging on his every word and watching closely as he wrapped the ring in the serviette. He hesitated, unsure whether he should keep it now or present it to Lina anyway. "It was supposed to be a romantic gesture, a way of asking you … if you'd marry me. Again."

They'd been married once before, but after Lucas had been captured as a spy and held in a Russian prison, Lina had divorced him. Lucas gave her a hopeful smile which faded quickly as Lina frowned and murmured, "Oh, Lucas."

Sensing that this was not going to be a kodak moment, most of the customers politely turned their attention elsewhere, but a few remained spellbound. Lucas attempted to salvage the situation by saying, "I'm sorry. It's too soon. I understand."

The thing was, though, it wasn't too soon for him. It had been six months since Lina's second husband had been killed, and they had seemed like an eternity to Lucas. He still loved her, and now that she was free again, he wanted her back. Six months ago, he'd accepted Lina's suggestion that they only meet once a week – Lina called it dating, though Lucas sometimes secretly referred to it as limited visitation rights – but now he found himself chafing to move on, to become closer again.

"It's not only too soon – it's – Lucas, what if I had swallowed this? Where on earth did you come up with such a silly idea?" Lina asked, and Lucas hesitated in the act of stuffing the ring into his pocket just long enough for Lina to correctly guess the answer. "Don't tell me it was Aleksander Dmitrovich."

Lucas didn't respond. Switching to her native Russian, Lina leaned forward and asked quietly, "And it never occurred to you that doing something suggested to you by the man who kept you in prison for eight years was not a good idea?"

"He made it sound funny," Lucas said, then realized he was not only defending himself, but also his jailor. He lapsed into silence, remembering. After the torture sessions had finished, after he'd revealed everything about the world of espionage and MI-5 that he knew, Lucas been kept in solitary confinement, except for Aleksander Dmitrovich Kuznetsov. The older man had come every two weeks, and each visit had started with a question, one simple question that would determine whether Aleksander Dmitrovich would offer him a cup of coffee, or whether he'd be displeased with Lucas' answer and only give him lukewarm water to drink. That time, the question had been, "How did you ask your wife to marry you, Lucas Alexandrovich?"

Deliberately not staring at the coffee pot on the table, Lucas had answered truthfully, "It was a Sunday morning. I'd just come home from an undercover assignment that went wrong, and Lina was still in bed. I'd been shot at, and the bullet had gone right by my head, so close I could feel the wind. I knew I could have been killed, and it made me think of all the things I hadn't done yet in my life. So I knelt down next to the bed, shook her awake, and asked her if she'd marry me."

"Just like that?" Aleksander Dmitrovich had asked, his eyes twinkling.

"Just like that," Lucas had replied.

"Did you have a ring to give her?"

"No," Lucas had admitted. "We went out later and bought one together."

"Hmph," Aleksander Dmitrovich had said, and there'd been a long pause. Lucas had waited, trying not to show any impatience, knowing it was part of the routine. At last, Aleksander Dmitrovich had reached for the coffee pot and poured a cup for Lucas. While sliding it across the table, he'd said, "Well, that was not a bad story, but let me tell you how I proposed to my wife."

Then he'd told of how he'd arranged with a friend to slip the ring into her ice cream, and how she'd pretended to swallow it, how she'd asked how far he was willing to go to get it back, and how he'd proclaimed he would do anything for her, including letting his fingers do the walking even in the sewer, if she would only marry him. Lucas remembered laughing with Aleksander Dmitrovich, but now he couldn't decide if the story had truly been funny, or whether his emotions had come from the fact that he was sipping coffee instead of water, and actually talking to another person instead of being alone in his cell.

Lucas came back to the present and saw Lina staring at him. He thought she might have said something, but he had no idea what, so he simply replied, "I'm sorry."

It seemed to be the right answer, as Lina's expression softened. "Come on," she said. "Let's walk."

Lucas had already finished his own ice cream by then, and so he had no regrets about standing up and following her away from the parlour. When they had gone two or three streets, they came across an open square with an empty bench. Lina steered him over, they sat down, and she took his hand in both of hers.

"I'm going to say no," she said, but before Lucas could do more than give her a hurt look, she continued, "And one of the reasons is because of the way you asked. I refuse to be manipulated by an idea that Aleksander Dmitrovich came up with." She spat the name out with loathing. "I hate that man, for hurting you. And sometimes I hate you, whenever you talk about him as though he were your friend!"

Stung, Lucas opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again. She was right – sometimes he did think of Aleksander Dmitrovich like that. For eight years, Aleksander Dmitrovich had been the closest thing he'd had to a friend. The Russian had been the only person he'd spoken to in that time, and despite the pain Aleksander Dmitrovich had put him through at the beginning of his imprisonment, Lucas still remembered many of their later conversations with fondness. It hadn't all been bad, but Lina couldn't see that, because she had found someone to hate and to blame in Aleksander Dmitrovich. Or maybe she just didn't want to see it. Lucas understood – he himself found it hard to admit that there could have been anything loveable about Lina's second husband.

"I still love you," Lina said. "I still care about you, and it hurts me every time I see how you've changed, because of him. Every time I see the scars you have, because of him. But nothing hurts me more than whenever you say something nice about him."

Lucas knew how she felt. He felt the same way whenever she said anything nice about her second husband, and especially whenever he realized she was truly grieving. Oh, maybe not for the man himself, but for what she thought she'd had, what he'd made her believe in. But that grief was coming between Lucas and his goal, and it not only hurt, it was starting to make him angry. However, because Lucas hated seeing Lina hurt in any way, for any reason, he didn't mention the man, just said again, "I'm sorry."

"So am I," Lina said. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. "You've been hurt so much already, I'm sorry every time I have to hurt you even more."

Lucas bent his head to their clasped hands and gave her knuckles a quick peck, then lifted his lips to hers for a longer, more intimate kiss. It was almost worth being rejected, he reflected in that part of his mind that was still capable of reasonable thought, if he got such a kiss out of it. Lina didn't always let it go this far. And indeed, she was the one who broke it off, pulling gently away long before Lucas was ready to stop, then putting her fingers on his mouth to keep him from following.

Lucas kissed her fingertips, and she smiled, then lowered her hand.

"So … if I asked you in another way …" Lucas said, digging into the pocket of his jeans. Before he could get the ring out, however, Lina's expression changed, and she looked away.

"No, Lucas," she said firmly. "Maybe later, but just … not now."

Impatience, frustration, and anger washed over him, and Lucas removed his hand from his jeans, clenching it to a fist. With a look of pity, Lina took it and began to uncurl his fingers. "I'm sorry I can't always give you what you want."

Gritting his teeth, because he hated being pitied by anybody, even Lina – especially Lina – Lucas removed his hand from hers, and switched back to English. "Yeah, well, sorry never stopped the Soar from flowing, did it?"

Lina gave him a calm look and a tolerant smile, so different from the puzzlement she'd showed the first time he'd ever said that to her. She hadn't known then that the Soar was the river that flowed through Leicester where he'd grown up – Lina's grasp of the geography of England outside of London had still been a bit sketchy in those days. He wondered vaguely if it had improved since then. It must have, in the … how many years had she been living here now? Fourteen, he calculated. And they'd only been married for three of them. It wasn't enough.

"Well, speaking of soaring," Lina said, expertly changing the subject. "How is training?"

"'S'good," Lucas grunted, accepting the new topic with relief, but wondering how on earth Lina had found a connection between the two words. Perhaps she thought he was simply soaring above the training that he was having to go through a second time in order to prove himself qualified to get his old job back, but that wasn't true. There had been times, especially at the beginning, when the course had seemed even harder than it had been the first time around. Lina waited patiently for more details, and Lucas added, "I've just had my last psychological evaluation, and training is almost finished now. One more week."

Lina's face lit up. "And you're sure you will pass?" When Lucas nodded, she cried, "That's wonderful!"

She was so obviously pleased that Lucas felt his own spirits rise. "It'll be good to get back."

"Do you know which department you'll be working at, once you get back to MI-5?" Lina asked.

"The same one," Lucas told her. "Counterterrorism."

Most of the joy drained abruptly out of Lina's face, though she tried to hide it. Lucas could see her forcing her smile to stay put, and could hear her trying to sound unconcerned as she asked, "Will it be a desk job or will you be out in the field?"

"Out in the field, as far as I know," Lucas said, wondering why the prospect was making her unhappy. She hadn't reacted that way when they'd been married. "I'm capable, Lina, I've done it before and I can do it again. I'm not an invalid, I don't need to be confined to some desk somewhere because I'm scared of my own shadow!"

"I know," she replied, sounding false again, and Lucas narrowed his eyes at her. "Lina. What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she said blithely. "Nothing."

"I can always tell when you're lying," he reminded her.

"You're too good at your job," she said, and Lucas thought he heard a touch of bitterness in her voice. It confused him. A moment ago, she'd been delighted to hear that he was going back to work, but then he'd mentioned mentioned getting out in the field again – oh.

"You don't have to be frightened for me, Lina," he told her. "They're not going to let me out of the country again very soon. I won't be arrested a second time."

"I know," Lina said with a sigh. "I know."

She gave him another forced smile, and Lucas returned it with a genuine one. It was good to know she cared enough about him to worry like that. It was very good indeed.


	2. Chapter 2

"For those of you who don't know," Harry Pearce said, "this is Lucas North. Lucas is returning to MI-5 after several years abroad, and I've convinced him to put his talents to work for us here at Section D. Lucas, it's good to have you here."

"It didn't take much convincing, Harry." Glad that Harry hadn't announced his prison experience to all of them, Lucas looked around the table of the briefing room with a smile. Some of them knew, but some didn't, and he wanted to keep it that way. "It's good to be here."

"You already know Adam, and Tim."

Lucas nodded to Adam Carter, the tall, blond man who had come with Harry to the airport in Moscow to pick him up when he'd been released, six months ago, and to Tim Forster, the young agent who'd been his minder for his first four weeks back in England.

"This is Ben Kaplan, and Connie James."

Ben was in his late twenties, with dark hair so short it looked like it was growing back from a recently shaved head. Connie was at least as old as Harry, probably even older, and had the same no-nonsense look and feel about her.

"We're going to dump you in the deep end this morning, Lucas," Harry went on, then gave Adam a nod. Adam clicked the remote so that the picture on the big screen showed a wrecked bus.

"You might have seen this on the news, and the official story is that it was a bomb," Adam said, changing pictures to something black and white and more grainy. "But the CCTV footage captured this. Watch here."

Using a laser pointer, Adam indicated something small, dark, and round that was floating between the bus and a nearby car. Just as the car in the next lane shot ahead, a beam of light came out from the strange globe at an angle, hitting the side of the bus close to the ground. There were flames, and then the bus exploded, taking the dark sphere with it.

"That looked like something out of Star Wars," Tim remarked with a nervous laugh. "The Death Star meets London Transport."

"The experts say it was a drone of some kind," Adam confirmed, "and the light that hit the petrol tank was a laser. It looks like an attempt at assassination, but none of the usual groups are claiming any victories. Connie, I want you to find out the identity of everybody who was on that bus, and run a deep background check on them. Get Ben to help you. Lucas, take Tim and go to Tarla Industries, find out everything you can about this drone. If they didn't make it, they might know who did."

"Right," Lucas said.

"Tarla – don't they make remote controlled helicopters and planes and things?" Tim asked.

"Yes," Adam said, "but their toy department, although real, is the perfect camoflage. They also make spy drones for the government."

"Cool," Tim said. As they filed out of the briefing room, he remarked to Lucas, "I had one of their things for Christmas once, it looked like a flying saucer."

"Then you must have the address," Lucas said.

"They're out in Acton somewhere, I think."

Lucas put an expectant look on his face and waited, and eventually Tim added, "I'll look it up, won't be a sec."

xxxxx

Like every morning, Olivia Stephens was trying to get her nine-year-old son Owen to eat his breakfast and do everything else that was necessary so that he could get to school on time. Unlike every morning, however, her efforts interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. Sighing in annoyance, Olivia stood up, but Owen was faster, shooting from the kitchen table straight to the door. He threw it open with an excited cry of, "Hallo!"

"Hallo," Olivia heard an unfamiliar voice say. "Is your mother here?"

Coming up behind Owen, she could see two men standing on the step, dressed in suits.

"Here she is," Owen announced.

"Owen, go finish your breakfast," Olivia told him, but Owen stayed where he was. Olivia turned her attention back to the two men and hoped they'd be quick.

"We'd like to talk to you about your son," one of the men said. He had a slight accent that she couldn't place, except to say it wasn't Indian.

"What about him?" Olivia asked, wondering if Owen had managed to get into trouble again. She didn't recognize the men, and they hadn't explained where they were from.

"Yes, what about me?" Owen echoed, then asked, "Do you want to see what I built?"

Assuming, as he always did, that the answer would be an enthusiastic yes, Owen raced off to the coffee table in the living room, the place of honour for his latest Lego creation.

"Can we come in?" the other man asked.

"Not until I see some identification," Olivia told them, but then the man lifted the jacket of his suit, just enough to show her the holster at his side, and the butt of the gun that was inside it.

"This is our identification," the man said, stepping forward and pushing past Olivia, who was too shocked to slam the door in his face. Owen met them halfway, holding the huge Lego rocket he'd built. "Look!"

"Owen, put that down and go eat," Olivia told him, wishing she could tell him to run away and get help. He wouldn't leave, though, not as long as he had an audience.

"It's a space ship that goes to Mars!" Owen started to explain.

"Wonderful," the first man said. "Have you got more stuff in your bedroom? Why don't you show me?"

Owen bounded eagerly up the stairs to his bedroom, and the man followed more slowly. In the living room, the second man sat down and looked at Olivia until she sat as well, balancing stiffly on the edge of the easy chair.

"What's going on?" she asked. "What do you want?"

"We want your help," the man said. "You work at Tarla Industries, you build spy drones with lasers. We want one."

"I work at Tarla, but I design toys," Olivia said, glancing at his hands. She could see his watch and even upside down, it was telling her how late it was. Looking back up at his face, she clarified, "Remote controlled helicopters for children, that sort of thing."

The man shook his head. "We know all about you, Olivia. We know you build spy drones for the government."

"Who are you?" Olivia asked. That accent – was he Iranian? Iraqi? He looked more European than anything else. Russian?

"It doesn't matter who we are, only what we can do. And what we can do is take Owen with us until you hand over the drone."

Olivia felt cold fear clutch her heart and squeeze it until it all but stopped beating. There was a sinking feeling in her stomach, and her mind kept saying, _this can't be true, this must be a nightmare,_ but no nightmare she had ever had was this clear, this real.

"You're working on a prototype that you call the Death Star," the man went on. "Like the real Death Star from the movie, it has a laser inside that can be used to kill. A person, not a planet."

It was a frighteningly realistic description of a top-secret project, right down to the nick-name and even the catch phrase they'd come up with for it. "Wh-where did you get this information?" Olivia asked. "Who told you this?"

"A colleague of yours at Tarla," the man said. "By the way, Jeremy Owusu is dead now."

Olivia stared at him, a slow chill running down her spine. Jeremy? Dead? She'd seen him at work only yesterday afternoon. "When? How?"

"Earlier this morning," the man said. "And as for the how, you really don't want to know."

Staring at him, Olivia realized what he must mean. Dread washed over her, her mouth dried up, and her stomach clenched tightly.

"The Death Star drone he gave us didn't work properly," the man went on. "Perhaps it was defective from the beginning, perhaps he modified it in some way to fool us. So we need another one, one that works. And you, Olivia Stephens, are going to get it, and fly it, for us, because if you don't, it's Owen first, and then you, do you understand?"

"But how?" she asked. Her voice broke and she had to try again. "How? I can't just walk out of Tarla with a drone under my arm. Security is very tight – how did Jeremy do it?"

"He didn't tell us and we didn't ask. But we know you'll find a way, especially if you want to see your son again."

"I'll need time," Olivia said. "I'll need time!"

"To-day and to-morrow," the man told her. "To-morrow evening at midnight. Jeremy Owusu managed it in that amount of time, so it should be more than enough for you."

He stood up from the couch, took something from his pocket, then got up onto the coffee table and stuck it to the ceiling near the light fixture.

"What are you doing?" Olivia asked, following as the man walked into the hall.

"If you call the police or tell anybody else about what's happening, I'm sure you know what will happen," the man said conversationally, taking another tiny device from his pocket and showing it to her before attaching it to the lampshade. "These are bugs, and we're listening to you. We're monitoring your e-mail, your post, and everything you say and do."

He went into the kitchen as well, but Olivia remained where she was, staring up at the bug. It was so small!

"We'll know if you take them down or try to disable them in any way," the man said, coming back out into the hall. "There are some upstairs, too, as I'm sure you'd expect. Now come say good-bye to Owen."

Feeling sick with fear, Olivia followed the man upstairs, where Owen was already packing his overnight bag, mostly with Legos and stuffed animals. "Hi, mum! They're going to take me to Legoland!"

Olivia gave the second man a hard look, but he only smiled and reached down to ruffle Owen's hair. "That's right," he said. "You'll have a great time with us."

If only Owen weren't so trusting, Olivia thought, but he'd always been that way, never shy around adults or strangers of any kind. Owen always assumed everybody wanted to be his friend, or at least talk to him. Now Olivia was left wondering if his personality would truly be the death of him.

"Have you got clean underwear?" the first man asked. "And your toothbrush?"

Owen ignored the first suggestion and ran off to the bathroom. Olivia walked reluctantly over to his chest of drawers and pulled out clean clothes, then made room in the bag for them by reducing the number of toys.

"Mum!" Owen exclaimed, coming back and tearing the stuffed turtle from her hands. "I can't go without Speedy!"

"Sorry," Olivia whispered, feeling tears come to her eyes. Inwardly, she was shouting at the men. _You're lying to him! You're not taking him to Legoland at all! How dare you betray his trust like that_!

Owen stuffed the soft animal back into the bag, then zipped it shut and glanced up at the men. "Come on, let's go! What time does Legoland open? Can we be the first ones there?"

"Say good-bye to your mother, Owen," the first man said, then told Olivia, "Don't worry, we'll take good care of him."

Olivia leaned down for a big hug, and Owen hugged back, but only briefly. He was too excited to be contained for long, and soon broke away, grabbing his bag and running downstairs to the door. The second man followed, and the first one stayed with Olivia. To her surprise, he pulled a mobile phone out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. "Keep this. We'll call you every evening at seven, and if you're making progress, we'll let you speak to him. But remember, we're listening. Don't tell anybody, not even your mother. Just get the drone, and you'll get Owen back."

Olivia nodded, silent and numb, and the man went downstairs and let himself out. Olivia ran to the window and looked out, watched Owen get into their car without once looking back, then sat down and cried. It was a long time before she could compose herself enough to get up and call the school to inform them that Owen wouldn't be coming that day.


	3. Chapter 3

Peter Blaze, the president of Tarla Industries, stared down at the mangled mess of metal and other components that Lucas had spread out on his desk. He picked up several pieces and studied them closely, then finally said, "Our Death Star!"

"Yours? How can you tell?" Tim asked.

Mr Blaze showed them something that obviously made perfect sense to him, but which neither Lucas nor Tim could see. "I'd recognize that work anywhere."

"What kind of drone was it?" Lucas asked.

"It's one of our latest prototypes," Mr Blaze said. "An assassination drone. One of our engineers made it look like the Death Star, just for fun, but the final product would be almost as deadly. For people, that is, not for planets."

"What?" Tim exclaimed.

"Oh, yes. It's small, but designed to carry a camera and a laser. Once the target has been identified, we can shoot from up to fifteen meters," Mr Blaze said.

Tim goggled at the man. Lucas was surprised, but tried not to show it as he asked, "This was a prototype, though, and not being used in any official capacity? You hadn't already handed it over for official use?"

"No," Mr Blaze said. "It wasn't finished – this design needed some modifications, and I think the final version was going to look like a Mylar balloon. And none of the prototypes should have left the building. I don't know how this one got out, but I'm going to order an internal investigation. Our security should have been tight enough to prevent that."

"Who knew about it?" Lucas asked.

"Theoretically, anybody in the company could have been spying," Mr Blaze said. He looked dismayed at the thought.

"Could you narrow it down a bit? Who was actually working on this? Who designed it, who knew what it was capable of?"

"We've got a team of three engineers for these particular contracts." Mr Blaze smiled a little at the term. "Jeremy Owusu, Olivia Stephens, and George Kumar. They've always been our best, and we keep them sequestered up on the third floor of the north wing. Do you want to talk to them?"

"Yes," Lucas said.

"My PA will show you the way."

Lucas noted that the PA used a key card in the lift to take them one floor up. They stopped first at Jeremy Owusu's office, but the door was shut and knocking produced no answer. The office of Olivia Stephens, however, was just down the corridor, and the PA gestured at the open door, then walked away. Lucas peered in, and saw Olivia sitting at her desk, staring at her computer screen, From what Lucas could see, it appeared she was avidly watching some science fiction movie such as _Star Wars_, but then she put her hand to her cheek as though wiping away a tear. A moment later, the picture disappeared, and programming language took its place.

Lucas knocked, and Olivia looked up, blinking. Yes, Lucas thought, she had been crying. Her eyes were red and another tear was running down her cheek already. She wiped it away and tried to act casual.

"Hi, I'm Simon Houlte, this is Chris Barlow, we're from the government," Lucas said, smiling and coming in. "We'd like to ask you a few questions."

"Right," Olivia said, running her finger across her cheek and forcing a smile. "Sorry. Hayfever. Is this about a new design?"

She sounded desperate somehow, Lucas thought, and said, "No it's about an old one, actually."

He'd brought the wreckage along, and now he spread it out on top of her desk, hitting a picture frame as he did so. It was a young boy, a fact which Lucas noted for later before turning his attention back to Olivia. "Do you recognize this?"

"Good heavens," Olivia murmured, running her fingers through the pieces. "Our Death Star! What happened to it?"

"It was used to blow up a bus here in London just after midnight," Tim said, and Olivia stared at him in horror, her mouth literally hanging open. When she could speak again, she squeaked, "A bus!"

"You didn't hear about it?" Tim went on. Olivia shook her head. "I don't catch the news much. Oh, no, this is terrible! Was anybody killed?"

"Six people," Lucas told her. Olivia put her hand to her mouth, looking from Lucas to Tim and back again. "Oh, no. Oh, no!"

"Did you help build this?" Tim asked, leaning forward to put his hand comfortingly on Olivia's arm. Olivia nodded mutely.

"So you must have known it would be used for assassination," Tim went on.

"Yes, but for people like Osama bin Laden!" Olivia exclaimed. "Not for buses here in London. Oh!"

Another wave of horror washed over her face, and she glanced from Tim to Lucas. "Do you happen to know if Jeremy Owusu was on that bus?"

"Why do you ask?" Lucas queried, watching Olivia closely.

"He hasn't come in to work to-day," she said. "And—and he hasn't called."

As excuses went, it sounded weak, but Lucas let it go, noting it for later.

"Not all of the victims have been identified," Tim said. "Do you know if he usually rode the number 24 on Grosvenor Street?"

Olivia shook her head in true bewilderment. "Grosvenor Street? Why would he? He lives out here in Acton, like I do, he hardly ever goes into the city."

"So why did you ask?" Tim asked.

"Because I didn't know where the bus had blown up," Olivia said. "I'm sorry. I was just being stupid."

But she didn't look stupid, Lucas thought. She looked scared. He decided to change the subject. "So you built this?"

"I helped design it," Olivia said. "It was my idea to make it look like the Death Star."

"Mr Blaze said it wasn't finished?"

"No. We're still trying to perfect the design."

"Do you have any idea how someone might have smuggled it out of the building?"

Olivia shook her head and whispered, "Security is so tight here … We need our cards to do everything, even move from one floor to the next." Lucas noticed that her eyes went to the photo of the young boy.

"Ms Stephens," he said, leaning closer. "Think back to the last month or six weeks. Has anyone expressed any special interest in your work? Wanted to know details of what you did?"

She shook her head without taking time to consider. "No. Nobody. I hardly talk to anybody outside of work, just Owen, really. There's not much time for anything else."

"Owen?" Tim asked.

"My son." Olivia looked at the photo again. "He's nine."

Lucas knew from others that there was usually an element of pride in parents' voices when they talked about their children, but in Olivia's voice, only worry was audible. Another thing to note for later.

"Thanks for your time," Lucas said, standing up. "Can you take us to George Kumar's office, please?"

George Kumar had seen the news and knew about the bus, but seemed genuinely shocked to find out that one of Tarla's drones had been involved. He, too, was surprised that Jeremy Owusu had not come in, but he didn't jump to any conclusions about him being dead in the explosion, not did he have any ideas of how the drone had been smuggled out of Tarla. One thing he did mention, however, was that whoever had flown the drone had not only known what they were doing, but they also had the right software and perhaps even the right kind of experience to control it.

"This is not a video game," George told them. "It is not as easy as twiddling a joystick. In fact, there is no joystick. You need both hands on the keyboard to control this drone."

Lucas and Tim drove back to Thames House with that piece of important information and their other first impressions.

xxxxx

After the government agents had gone, Olivia sat at her desk and took deep breaths, trying not to cry. What had she got herself mixed up in? The Death Star was meant for use in foreign countries, not here at home! And Jeremy hadn't come in to work – the men had been right. He was dead. He'd done something wrong and they had killed him. Owen would be next, and then her, if she did anything wrong. Somehow, she had to get them what they wanted.

She went down the corridor and into the workshop. As she stood staring at the jumble of parts on the workbench, George Kumar came in.

"Have they spoken to you yet? The people from the government?" When Olivia nodded, George went on. "How are you doing?"

Olivia made a helpless gesture with her hands. "I can't believe somebody used our Death Star to kill innocent people!"

"Are you crying about it?" he asked. "Those people who came along, from the government, they wanted to know if you've always suffered from hayfever."

"Yeah," Olivia lied. "Yeah, I'm crying about it. This isn't how it's supposed to be. When I helped design the Death Star, I was thinking of Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda, not innocent people on a bus in the middle of London!"

"It is bitter," George said. "Of course, you never know. Maybe there was a member of Al Qaeda here in London, and they were trying to get him, but they missed."

"If somebody official was using this thing, they wouldn't have sent agents around here to ask what it was and who built it," Olivia snapped.

"True," George agreed. "So that means it wasn't somebody official."

"But if it wasn't somebody official, then how did they get their hands on it?" Olivia asked. "I mean, who knew about it besides us, Jeremy, and Mr Blaze?"

"Speaking of Jeremy, have you heard anything from him?" George asked.

Olivia shook her head. "No, have you?"

"No." George shrugged, then said, "And to think I considered taking the day off to-day, too. I would have missed all the excitement. Or perhaps not. Can you imagine MI-5 knocking on my door and catching me in front of the telly after I had called in at work saying I had symptoms of death?"

That was his usual excuse whenever he felt the need to stay home, but to-day, Olivia gave him a hard look. "That's not funny."

"No, you are right. Well, if I am going to stay home anytime soon, I will have to think of a new excuse. Water on the brain? Sprained my dignity and can't get up?"

Olivia sighed. George took the hint. "Right, then, let us see what we can do about making our Death Star bigger, better, newer and more improved, and able to do not only the washing up, but also the hoovering."

"I'd settle for getting it to change channels on the telly," Olivia murmured.

They switched from gossip to technical jargon then, but as they spoke, Olivia found herself missing Jeremy already. There was a different feel to the discussion without him. She tried to remember if he'd ever not been there, and couldn't. Eventually, both of them sensing the strangeness, she and George broke off the discussion and went back to their offices to work separately. There, Olivia was free to let her mind roam to the other problem she was grappling with. How had Jeremy managed to get the drone out of Tarla? As she'd told those men, he hadn't just walked out with it under his arm. Had Jeremy flown it? They often did outside tests with the drone, up on the roof, but the only person with a card authorized to open the roof door was Mr Blaze himself. None of the windows in the building opened at all, except for those in the loo.

The loos. There were windows in there, high up on the outside wall, just big enough to let a little light in, and enough air to keep the room fresh. They only opened at the top, and the Death Star itself wouldn't fit through the gap. If she broke it down into its component parts, Olivia thought, she could squeeze them through. But then what? Throw everything out and let it land on the pavement three stories below? That would certainly shatter the thrusters, the camera, and the laser, and even if she packed everything in padded bags, they'd still be inside the security fence when they hit the ground.

Padded bags. Flying drones. She let the ideas run around in the back of her mind, even when the security agents came to do their internal investigation of how the Death Star had managed to get out of the building. Close to lunchtime, the solution came to her in a flash. She could hang a padded bag of components outside the loo window and use a remote controlled helicoper from outside the security fence to pick it up. Assembling the pieces at home would not be a problem, as she often did that kind of thing in her bedroom workspace. She also happened to have a remote controlled helicopter at home, too, which she'd given Owen for Christmas. He'd only been mildly interested; she had actually played with it more than he had.

Now she just needed somewhere to hang the bag so that a remote controlled vehicle could pick it up … a long horizontal pole would be best. Olivia went into the loo, balanced herself on the toilet seat, and looked out of the window at the side of the building next to it. If she could get a drill without being noticed, she could drill a hole right there, and stick something in it, something thin, but strong, like the metal aerial of old-fashioned radios. It would have to be smooth at the end, no little bumps or anything else that would impede the handles of the bag from sliding right off once the vehicle caught them. Yes. It could work. And then she'd hand the drone over to those awful men and get Owen back.

Olivia went back to the workshop and hunted through the available parts until she'd found something similar to the aerial she'd envisioned, then checked the clock. Lunchtime. Hopefully, George had already gone down to the canteen. Sticking her head out the door to check that nobody was in the corridor, Olivia picked up a drill and carried it boldly to the loo. Security had come and gone, and she felt safe enough now. She wasn't tall enough to reach out of the open window, even by standing on the toilet, and had to go back to the workshop for a stepladder. It just barely fit in the cubicle, and she was able to snake one arm out through the opening, holding the drill tightly in her hand. It didn't take long to make the hole, but she couldn't help that it slanted slightly to one side. She pulled the drill back in, then reached for the metal pole and pushed it into the hole, careful not to drop it. It stuck out at about an eighty degree angle from the side of the building, but extended out a good forty five centimeters, which would give her just enough room to maneuver the helicopter. It would be even better if she equipped the helicopter with a similar pole in front, perhaps with a hook on it, to lift the handles of the bag and hold them in place. Yes, it was going to work. Feeling a sense of relief and a glimmer of hope that she might actually get Owen back, Olivia took the drill out of the loo.

Ahead of her, George strolled out of his office, no doubt having been working so hard he'd forgotten it was time to eat. He turned as soon as he saw her, making Olivia's heart sink, and looked at the tool in her hands. "Let me guess, you left your sandwiches out overnight and now they're so hard and stale you have to drill through them."

Olivia glanced down guiltily at the drill she was carrying, but tried to collect herself. "Yeah, something like that."

"May I suggest a saw instead?" he said.

"Or a laser?" Olivia asked. George did an exaggerated double take. "Could it be that you are finally developing a sense of humour, Olivia? You have worked with me for five years – I was starting to despair that it would ever happen!"

"It must be a fluke," Olivia said. "I won't be funny to-morrow, I'm sure."

To her great relief, George went away smiling, and Olivia continued on her way back to the workshop. She was trembling, almost shaking with fear and stress, when she put the drill away, and it took her a long moment to settle down enough to go back for the stepladder. This time, however, she checked to make sure that the corridor was clear before exiting the loo. Even though they usually had this part of the floor to themselves, messengers, PA's, and sometimes Mr Blaze himself showed up occasionally, not to mention the internal investigators, and Olivia was sweating with the stress by the time she'd replaced the ladder where it belonged.

xxxxx

**SectionD:** glad you're hooked. I've concentrated a little bit more on Lucas than on the team overall, so I'm afraid the story might be developing in a different way than you wish. If this were a true Spooks episode, there'd be much more of an ensemble feel to it, but that's not something I felt capable of writing. But thank you for reading and replying, and I hope you continue to do so. I'll be updating every Tuesday and Friday.


	4. Chapter 4

Almost as soon as Lucas and Tim returned to the Grid, they were called to the briefing room to give their reports.

"Accordng to Mr Blaze, the head of Tarla Industries, there are three engineers responsible for the drones," Tim said. "Jeremy Owusu, Olivia Stephens, and George Kumar. Jeremy Owusu was missing from work to-day, and did not call in sick. Olivia and George were both there, neither appeared to know anything about the explosion. Everyone that we spoke to at Tarla Industries, however, identified this as an assassination drone for soft targets in the Middle East. Olivia went so far as to mention Osama bin Laden as a possibility."

Harry was not impressed by the name-dropping. Lucas took up the thread. "But Olivia did say something odd when we told her about the bus. She wanted to know if Jeremy Owusu had been on it."

"Did she say why?" Harry asked.

"She said he hadn't come in to work that day, and hadn't called in sick," Lucas explained. "I asked if she knew if Jeremy Owusu usually rode that bus, but she said he hardly ever went into the city, and she was just being stupid. Also, by the way, she was crying when we came in."

"She tried to pass it off as hayfever," Tim added, "but she didn't sniff or sneeze once while we were in her office."

Lucas was surprised that Tim had noticed. The young man might have a bit of a mouth, but he was more observant than Lucas had expected.

"And George Kumar said he'd never noticed Olivia having hayfever before," Tim went on.

"Do we think there might be a connection between Olivia and Jeremy?" Harry asked.

"If there is, we'll find it," Lucas said. "I suggest that we put all three of them on close surveillance, starting immediately."

"Agreed," Harry said, then turned to Ben and Connie for a report on the identities of the victims of the bus explosion. As Lucas had expected, Jeremy Owusu was not among them.

xxxxx

By three thirty that afternoon, Olivia had realized that she couldn't smuggle the entire drone out at once. Neither the antenna or the remote controlled helicopter would be able to hold more than a few hundred grams of extra weight, and although the drone was actually quite light for its size, it still weighed much more than that. If she hung a bag holding the complete drone from the antenna, the relatively flimsy metal would bend significantly, if not break outright, and the bag would slip off. Even if she managed to get it onto the helicopter, it would render the toy unable to fly. She'd only be able to do a few parts a day, and considering the total weight of the drone, she wouldn't even manage half by the deadline! Nor could she manage more than one pick-up a day; it would look too suspicious if she suddenly changed her habits and started going out each lunchtime, and one of the many Tarla workers who ate at nearby cafes was sure to spot her aiming the helicopter at their building. There was nothing else for it, she knew, but to ask the men for more time, explain that she was smuggling as much as she could each evening, and hope they didn't hurt Owen.

Thinking of Owen, no doubt kept prisoner somewhere, left alone, wondering what was going on and why the men weren't keeping their promise about taking him to Legoland, made her want to cry. She bit down mercilessly on her bottom lip, put the thought of Owen away in a separate part of her mind, and got back to getting things ready. She'd already swiped a set of working thrusters from an older spy drone prototype, and had hidden them in her desk, but the question of weight had made her give up the idea of extra padding. Now she was searching her desk for a lightweight plastic bag to hold the thrusters.

Five minutes later, however, she was ready to scream with frustration. How could she not have a simple plastic bag anywhere? She wasn't especially neat or tidy, but apparently, she either didn't hoard bags, or she'd never brought one in to work. Frowning, she got up, wandered around her office, and almost fell over the solution. Her rubbish bin had been emptied the night before and was still empty, with a fresh plastic bin liner just beckoning to her. Thankfully, she grabbed it up and laid it out on her desk. It was much too big for what she needed, so she snipped off the top twenty centimeters, then cut ovals in the sides to produce makeshift handles. Yes, it would do. She wasn't an engineer for nothing.

Keeping an eye out for George, Olivia dashed over to the workshop for the stepladder and wondered what she would say if George caught her. In the end, though, there was no need for any excuse; she didn't see anybody as she went to the loo and set the ladder up. Looking out of the window, she realized she'd made a good choice with the bin liner; it was as white as the side of the building and wouldn't stick out too awfully much. There wasn't any wind, either, and the bag hung limply. As she put the stepladder away, Olivia wondered what would be the best time to come. If she had a plane with the right kind of camera, she could do it in the dark, but since she didn't, she'd have to come after most people had gone home, but while it was still light enough to see. She'd wait until the kidnappers had called her that night at seven, then leave the house directly afterwards.

xxxxx

Lucas spent the rest of the afternoon at the computer, doing his spying from his desk. When they were called in for another briefing, he glanced at his watch, surprised that so much time had already gone by. He had much to report, but Malcolm Wynne-Jones, the technical genius behind Section D who dealt with gadgets, was also there, and Harry called on him first.

"We successfully bugged the houses of Jeremy and George," Malcolm said, "but when we got to Olivia's, we found that somebody had beaten us to it. We got out as soon as we noticed, and I don't _think_ they picked up anything except a few shuffling sounds. But you know that two surveillance systems can cancel each other out, and in the interest of not revealing ourselves, we thought it best not to continue with our plans. I did leave two men in the neighbourhood to watch the house as well as they could without electronic help."

"And you didn't find anything like that in Jeremy's house?" Ben asked. "Because I found a financial trail in his bank accounts, or rather, a special account which was receiving ten thousand pounds a month for the last six months. I'm thinking it would make more sense for someone to bug Jeremy."

"No similar trail for Olivia?" Harry asked, and Ben shook his head. "Nothing. So who would be wanting to listen in on her, then?"

"I'd rule out any of our sister agencies," Malcolm said. "As far as I could tell, the bugs were not standard issue."

"Could it be the mastermind behind the attack?" Tim asked, but Malcolm merely shrugged.

"Any clue as to Jeremy's whereabouts?" Harry went on.

Lucas spoke up. "Jeremy's car got a parking ticket to-day, and I've tracked it backwards through the CCTV footage. As far as I can tell, he came home yesterday from Tarla at shortly past six, then drove out again at eleven o'clock in the evening, joining the A4020 going west, then turning onto the A4000, Gunnersbury Lane, in a south, south-west direction. He parked close to Gunnersbury Park, left the car there, and disappeared."

"Has he tried to leave the country? Have you checked planes, trains, and ferries?" Harry asked.

"I'm still in the middle of that," Lucas admitted, "but so far, no sign of him. I also checked Olivia's movements, to see if I could find anything between her and Jeremy. As far as I can tell, she didn't leave her house at all in the evening, or else she kept to roads that have no CCTV. But here's another odd thing. She has a son, Owen, who is nine years old and attends Seathwaite Primary School in Acton. Yesterday, she dropped him off and picked him up at the same place. To-day she didn't, she drove directly to Tarla and back home again."

"He could be sick," Adam said. Adam had a son of his own, Lucas remembered, and would know about these things.

Harry glanced over to Malcolm. "Any sign of a sick child in the house when you were there?"

"No," the older man said. "There was nobody there at all."

"He might have been asleep," Tim suggested, but Adam shook his head. "Parents don't leave young children home alone, especially not when they're sick. If Olivia didn't ask anybody to come over and baby-sit, she probably took him to someone."

"Well, it couldn't have been his gran, because Olivia's mother lives in Kettering," Tim put in. "That's a bit far."

"A friend or a neighbour," Adam suggested.

"Right," Harry said, putting an end to the child-care discussion and turning to Lucas for an explanation as to why he'd brought up the subject in the first place. "So …?"

"So I think there's a connection here somewhere," Lucas said.

"A connection between a sick child and an exploding bus?"

"We don't know that he's sick," Lucas said. "But I do know that his mother is worried about him. I was watching her to-day and she looked at his photo when she was talking about the security in Tarla Industries."

"I'm going to need more than a look, Lucas," Harry said, and Lucas nodded. "I know, Harry. I'll find it."

"Right," Harry said, and moved on to what Adam and Ben had to report.

xxxxx

With Owen gone, the house was quiet, too quiet, and Olivia tried not to think about the permanent silence that would result if he never came home again. When she'd got home from work, she'd gone upstairs to her bedroom workshop and had cannibalized a wire coat hanger, snipping it to the right length, then bending a curve at one end. Finally, she'd soldered it to the front of the remote controlled helicopter. It actually took longer to find the binoculars that she would need in order to see and guide the helicopter to the plastic bag. Now, after locating them at the top of her wardrobe, Olivia found herself wandering around the house from room to room, not quite knowing what to do as she waited for the phone to ring. After each round, she ended up in the living room, in front of the wall where she'd hung Andy's photo on the day afer he'd died. _I wish you were here_, she said silently, each time she passed it and saw his smiling face. Andy had died in a car crash, completely unexpectedly, when Owen had just turned three. Owen didn't even remember him, but Olivia could not forget. _We were a good team. I miss your support. I miss you._

But he wasn't here, and as much as she might wish otherwise, Olivia had become used to doing things on her own now. Grimly determined that she would do everything she could to ensure that Owen would not be reduced to a simple photo on the wall and a stone in the graveyard, Olivia turned away from the wall and wandered into the kitchen. She could fix supper while she waited, even though it was a bit earlier than they usually ate.

The phone finally rang at two seconds past seven, and Olivia, who had been hovering over it for at least ten minutes, snatched it up. "Hello!"

"How are things coming along?" It was that man, she recognized the faint accent.

"Owen," Olivia demanded. "How's Owen?"

There was a pause, and then Owen came on the line, loudly protesting, "Mum, they promised they'd take me to Legoland, but they haven't!"

"Love, are you all right?" she asked.

"We didn't go anywhere to-day, just to their house, and they don't even have any Legos here!"

Owen's habit of saying exactly what was on his mind and not noticing the need for anything else had never been more frustrating than to-day. Olivia broke into his recitation. "Owen, how are they treating you? Did you have anything to eat to-day and are you all right?"

But then it was the man again. "He's fine, Olivia, just fine. And how are you? Have you got everything you need?"

"No," she cried! "I already told you, I need more time!"

"Jeremy Owusu managed," the man told her reproachfully.

"Yes, but I don't know he did it!" Olivia almost sobbed with frustration. "I do have a plan, I can get everything out of Tarla eventually, but I can only do a little bit at a time!"

"Why?" the man asked.

"Because I'm using a remote controlled helicopter to pick up the parts, and if I put too much weight on it, it will crash," Olivia wailed, desperate for them to understand.

"Explain," the man snapped.

Olivia explained her actions with the antenna, the bag of parts, and the helicopter, but got flustered, and ended up telling everything backwards. When she got to the point where she had to admit she was smuggling things out through the window in the loo, the man laughed heartily.

"I'm doing the best I can," Olivia told him tartly, stung by his amusement. "If I get caught and sacked, you'll never get your drone."

"And you won't get Owen back," the man said.

"I know! And I'm doing everything you want! Please let me have more time! I can do a few parts each day, then assemble it here at home and give it to you by … Friday. Friday midnight at the latest. Please!"

The man sighed. "That's cutting it very close, but if you can promise it will be fully functional by then—"

"I can!" Olivia said quickly. Her heart was thudding fast and hard in her chest. "I promise! I wouldn't risk the life of my son, I'm doing the best I can, and if it's not good enough, then –"

"Then what?"

Olivia remained silent, realizing she'd just talked herself into a corner, and the man chuckled mirthlessly. "We can extend the deadline, but it will have to be eleven p.m., not midnight."

"I can manage that," Olivia assured him.

"Good. We'll call again to-morrow." The man cut the connection, and Olivia hung up in a cold sweat. Thank goodness. Owen was still alive, and aside from not having been in Legoland, he was obviously not being badly treated, otherwise he would have said something. And they'd extended the deadline. Three more nerve-racking days, but at least now she had a good chance of pulling it off successfully and getting her son back. Placing the helicopter carefully into a carrier bag, Olivia added the remote and the binoculars, then went out to the car and put the bag in the back seat. She drove away from the house, and as she turned the corner, she noticed a red car coming up behind her, and turning in the same direction. In the warren of narrow, short streets where she lived, it was easy to spot movement, even in the rear view mirror.

Suddenly, it occurred to her that someone might be following. Could the government have put her under surveillance? Or was it the same men who had Owen? No, it couldn't be, she told herself. They wouldn't have to follow because they knew she'd do exactly what she was told. It had to be the government. If they caught her and prevented her from getting the drone to the men, she'd never get Owen back! The thought made her want to panic, and she fought the feeling down. She'd have to lose them, even though they were probably professionals and she was just an amateur at the game. A picture came into her mind, the view from the loo window. Beyond the security fence of Tarla, she'd been able to see Central Middlesex Hospital in the background. Maybe she could shake them off there. It was her only chance, not to mention being close to Tarla.

She drove to the north entrance of the hospital and found a parking space, then hurried towards the building. As she walked, she looked around, but the red car was no longer visible. Had she lost them already, or were they just hanging back? She couldn't stop to find out; it would be dark soon enough as it was. The hospital was a huge complex, and she got lost once, but managed to find a nurse to give her directions to the opposite entrance. Eventually, she emerged. The industrial park in which Tarla was located was directly ahead, although the entrance to Tarla was on the other side, but she crossed the street and got as close as she could. People often walked their dogs here in the grassy spots between parking lots and industrial estates, and she hoped that she wouldn't stick out too much, even if she was walking a helicopter instead of a hound.

After some searching, she found a place where she had a direct line of sight to the north wing of the Tarla building where she'd hung the bag out of the loo window. Focusing the binoculars, she was relieved to see that it was still hanging there, but then she had to lower them again to get the helicopter started. It took off, and she flew it high, out of range of security cameras and curious guards.

She let it circle the area twice, trying to act casual, then picked up the binoculars again and began to aim the helicopter more carefully. It would be easier, she thought, if she had the targeting software and her laptop, the way they controlled the drones, but if she had all that, she wouldn't need to be picking up the parts in this clandestine way. She brought the helicopter down to the level of the loo window and let it hover, then positioned it carefully and nudged it forward, watching carefully to make sure the wire coat hanger slid in under the handles of the bag. Then she pushed the helicopter up just a smidgen and was rewarded with a view of the bag rising as well. Very carefully, she backed the helicopter away from the building and held her breath, watching the bag follow the movement. It didn't fall, and she took the helicopter up higher again, then brought it back to where she was standing and lowered it ever so slowly to the ground. As soon as the rotors had stopped turning, she grabbed the bag and inspected the thrusters. Safe and sound!

She was so relieved she wanted to cry, but then she thought of how many more times she'd have to do the exact same thing, and a chill down her spine chased the tears away again.

Xxxxx

**Section D**: Glad you appreciate the little bits of humour! I love slipping them in there.

**leakybiro**: I did see that little blog by RA, and saw the pictures, and I was devastated by the tattoos! I don't like them in real life, and it never occurred to me that Lucas would have any. To judge by some of the simple statements that RA made on the blog, I either misunderstood quite a few things from the previous press releases, or I drew all the wrong conclusions. So, Lucas won't have any tattoos in this story, and his relationship to Harry will be more friendly than tense. In fact, I feel like I'm writing Winnie the Pooh here, in comparison to the "real" Spooks. I'm sure there will be other huge differences, but I can only hope that you (all of you) keep reading!

Thanks for your comments so far, both of you!


	5. Chapter 5

After failing to find any clue to Jeremy Owusu's movements, Lucas went home late that night. He had an unopened bottle of champagne in the fridge, left over from that day when he'd asked Lina to marry him. Now he popped the cork and poured himself a glass to celebrate his first day back at Thames House, his own private victory. He'd made it! He'd been in prison, but he'd come back, and now he was working again, just as though he'd never been gone. The thought was exhilarating, especially when he remembered all the times in his cell when he'd imagined he would die there, never seeing anybody or anything else ever again.

"To me!" he said aloud, lifting his glass. "I've got my life back now!"

But when he remembered Lina, his exhilaration disappeared. Lina. She was supposed to be here with him, celebrating with him, but she wasn't. Suddenly, the champagne tasted sickeningly sweet, the flat seemed not only empty, but oppressive, and he no longer felt triumphant, just exhausted and alone. Lucas dashed the contents of his glass into the sink, slung the bottle back into the fridge, and stumbled off to bed.

The next morning, at their first briefing session, Connie announced, "The police found Jeremy Owusu's body in the night. A rough estimate of the time of death puts it after the bus explosion."

"Where did they find it?" Adam asked.

"Under some bushes in Battersea Park," she reported. "He'd been tied to one of them and gagged, then shot in the genitals and left to bleed to death."

All of the younger, more inexperienced agents winced, and Tim said, "That rules out suicide, then."

Harry shot the young agent a hard look, and Lucas mused aloud, "Geographically speaking, that's not very far from the bus explosion, but it is from Gunnersbury Park. As he left his car in Acton, and I haven't been able to spot him on the public transport CCTV footage, somebody must have picked him up and driven him there."

"To work the assassination drone?" Adam asked, and Lucas could only shrug.

"So, we have a possible traitor, but no idea who he was working for," Harry said. "Nobody's come forward to claim the explosion as a terrorist attack."

"They're usually so keen to boast about their handiwork," Ben murmured.

"Olivia Stephens is the next best thing we have to a lead," Lucas said. "I think we should talk to her, but if her house is bugged, somebody may also be watching her."

"Speaking of Olivia," Malcolm spoke up. "The evening surveillance team recorded that she drove away last night. They followed her to Central Middlesex Hospital, where unfortunately, they lost her. She was gone for about thirty five minutes, then came back, and was carrying this the entire time."

He put a picture on the screen of Olivia exiting her house with a large carrier bag that obviously held something bulky. The same bulk remained visible on the pictures from the CCTV footage of the hospital entrances, and on the picture of Olivia getting it out of the car again.

"Maybe her son's in hospital and she was visiting him with some kind of toy?" Tim suggested, but Malcolm shook his head. "We checked. He's not there."

"Could that be another assassination drone?" Harry asked.

"There've been no new reports of any explosions or even mysterious deaths that could be traced back to laser beams," Connie said.

"Perhaps she went there to meet somebody and they didn't show, so she had to take it back again, whatever it was," Ben mused.

"I agree we need to talk," Harry agreed. "Lucas, stage a meeting with her, as soon as possible."

xxxxx

At work the next day, Olivia had to requisition the specialists for the kind of camera, or rather, the camera parts, that they had used on the Death Star. It wasn't an unusual request, but she still felt nervous about it, even after the specialists delivered the equipment. She'd been through the older prototypes, but the camera designs available there weren't suitable for what she had in mind. Still, she'd taken one of the old ones anyway, to use in the new prototype. Hopefully, it would mean that the new camera wouldn't be discovered missing for a while.

She couldn't stop thinking about the night before, the fact that she'd been followed, combined with what the men had told her about Jeremy's death. They had certainly killed him, but was it only because the drone had been defective? Or were they trying to cover their tracks? Would they kill her as well, even if she made them the perfect drone? And Owen? She didn't want to die, but she wouldn't mind it so awfully much as long as they killed Owen at the same time. It was the thought of him being left alive without her that made her panic.

Or would the men let her go and simply wait for the government to pick her up on a charge of treason? The people from the government had certainly been able to track the Death Star quickly enough; it wouldn't take long for them to find her. Maybe they already had. Just because she hadn't seen them after she'd reached the hospital last night didn't mean they hadn't seen her. She was becoming paranoid just thinking about it, but then she remembered Owen and knew she had to continue, no matter what.

Just before her usual quitting time, Olivia wrapped the camera parts in a thin sheet of foam, then placed them in the bin bag and raced to the loo to hang it out of the window. She forgot the stepladder in her rush to get it over with, and had to go back. Of course George came out of his office at exactly the moment when Olivia was halfway between the workshop and the loo.

"Are you climbing the career ladder?" George teased. "It looks a bit short to me."

"There's a lightbulb in the ladies' loo that needs changing and I really can't wait for the janitor," Olivia said, trying to sound blithe at the same time as she was breaking out in a cold sweat. "When it's that time of the month, you just want to get things done as soon as possible and get it over with, if you know what I mean."

"Right …" George tried to hide a horrified expression and scurried down the hall, eager now to avoid any further conversation. Olivia continued on her way, glad that it had been George. Jeremy wouldn't have been scared off so easily – he might even have offered to help with the lightbulb – but then, if Jeremy had been there, she wouldn't be dragging the stepladder around in the first place. She just hoped that her explanation was good enough and that George wasn't starting to suspect anything now that he'd twice caught her doing funny things.

There was a bit more wind that day than the day before, and the bag with the camera parts rustled occasionally, but otherwise hung nicely. Olivia knew that a good gust could carry it off, but there was nothing she could do about that except hope and pray. Replacing the stepladder, she got her handbag and left the building.

She had just pulled up outside Owen's school when she remembered he wasn't there, and slapped her hand to her forehead in annoyance. What a scatterbrain she was becoming! As she drove off, however, she found herself wondering if she'd ever drive that stretch again, and had to blink away tears.

At home, she'd barely got out of the car when a postal worker came huffing up the street under the weight of a bulky, heavy package. "Hi! Good to find someone at home. I've got a package for a Johnny Baxter, can you take it for him?"

"Yeah, sure," Olivia said, taking the box and nearly dropping it.

"Somebody's been ordering weight lifting equipment, feels like," the woman said with a grin. "Which number is your house? I'll put a note on Johnny Baxter's door, and he can come pick it up."

Olivia heaved the box indoors and dumped it in the front hall, then glanced down at the address on it. She didn't remember any Baxters living two doors down on the other side of the street; the old married couple in that house was named McCallum. They always shouted at Owen for trampling through the flowers in their front garden to pet their cat. It didn't help that Owen liked the cat and always thought that seeing the tabby sunning itself on their windowbox was a open invitation for him to run over and stroke it until it purred. Well, the McCallums wouldn't be shouting at him this week, Olivia thought.

But maybe those men would be.

Olivia tried not to think of how Owen was coping, or even how the men were coping with Owen, and busied herself instead with making dinner. When the doorbell rang, she was right in the middle of chicken korma, and had to turn the stove off and wipe her hands before she could open the door.

A tall blond man stood there, leaning on crutches, his ankle in a splint. When he saw her, he smiled broadly. "Hi, I'm Johnny Baxter, I got a note that you took a package for me?"

"Yeah, it's here," Olivia said, opening the door a bit wider so he could see it.

"Oh, great. Um, you'd be doing me a big favour if you could carry it home for me." Apologetically, he indicated his leg. "I've broken a bone in my ankle, just got back from the hospital."

"No problem," Olivia told him, although it was. She didn't want to leave the house in case the men called early, or something else happened. Still, the package was heavy and the man did have crutches. After she'd hefted the box into her arms, Johnny led the way down the path.

"I tripped on the stairs," he said. "Can you imagine?"

"Better than breaking your neck," Olivia said, and he laughed. "Yeah. Still, I got off lightly. I knew a girl once who fell down a spiral staircase and broke her leg in three places."

He looked back at her with a grin, but Olivia couldn't reciprocate his cheerfulness. He didn't seem to notice, however, as he continued along the pavement. Olivia was surprised at how fast he was, even with his crutches, and she struggled to keep up.

"So, here we are." Johnny had left the door ajar, and now he used one crutch to push it open. "Would you mind terribly taking it into the living room? I'll offer you a drink for your trouble."

"Thanks, but I can't stay." Olivia followed him in, nearly tripping over the cat as it ran in between her legs. "Whoops. Where are the McCallums?"

"They won free tickets to dinner and a play to-night," Johnny said.

"Nice," Olivia said, making her way through the living room to the table. Letting the box down, she said, "Like I said, thanks for the offer …"

She let her voice trail off as she realized that there was somebody else in the room as well, someone whose dark hair and big nose she recognized instantly, even if she couldn't remember his name. It was the man from the government, the man who'd come to Tarla to speak to her about the Death Star! Panicking, Olivia glanced back to the door, but Johnny had not only shut it, he was also standing directly in front of it, with his crutches set aside and his weight balanced equally on both legs.

"Please sit down, Olivia," the dark-haired man said.

xxxxx

**Section D**: Thanks for reviewing! I'm glad you're impressed and waiting for more. As for the real Spooks, I just hope I like their version of Lucas!

**leakybiro**: Thank you for your praise. Where did you hear that Spooks might not be debuting until January 2009? I live in hope that it will still show up sometime this year, preferably in October, as I am absolutely frothing at the mouth with impatience! I'll try to think up a new idea for another Lucas story soon.


	6. Chapter 6

Lucas watched as Olivia stood there for a long moment, her eyes darting from him to Adam and back again. She had an open, expressive face that showed everything she was thinking, and he could see her fear, her indecision, and the flicker of hope that crossed her face as she caught sight of the door that led out into the back garden. But when it became obvious even to her that her chances of escape were almost nil, she moved stiffly to the couch and sat down, swallowing nervously.

"We just want to talk to you for a few minutes," Lucas told her, using his most comforting tone of voice. Olivia didn't say anything, and he seated himself in the easy chair directly across from her. "You've been worried about Jeremy Owusu, haven't you?"

Bewilderment showed on her face and Olivia asked blankly, "What?"

Whatever she'd been expecting him to ask, it obviously hadn't been that.

"You asked me about him yesterday when I came to talk to you about the Death Star," Lucas reminded her, and Olivia flushed guiltily. "You were worried that something had happened to him even before he didn't show up at work, and when you heard about the bus explosion, you assumed the worst."

"Yes," Olivia agreed slowly. "Jeremy was one of those people who never missed work. He always came, every day. So, when he didn't show up, yes, I was worried about him."

She used the past tense, Lucas noted, and thought, _she knows he's dead_. Out loud, he asked, "Did you call his home to see if he were ill?"

Olivia shook her head. "No."

Another confirmation, Lucas thought, and went on. "Did anybody from Tarla phone him to see why he hadn't come?"

"George might have," Olivia murmured. "I don't know."

"Do you ever see Jeremy outside of work?"

"Not really." She hesitated, and Lucas urged, "Go on."

"I ran into him in the shops occasionally. And once when my car broke down, he drove us around for three days."

"Us?"

"Me to work, and Owen to school."

Her voice and body language made it seem unlikely that she'd been having an affair with Jeremy, or that they were any closer than she'd indicated. Lucas went on. "Has Jeremy ever seemed to you to have more money than he should have?"

"What?" Olivia asked again.

"You work together, you probably have a fair idea of how much money he makes," Lucas said, careful to keep to the present tense. "Has he ever acted like he's come into a windfall? Buying things you know he can't afford?"

"You mean like a fancy car or a cruise around the world because he'd won the lottery?" Olivia asked. "No, but then, I probably wouldn't have noticed. He didn't have a wife or any kids, so naturally, he had more to spend."

Lucas leaned forward just a bit. "When did you find out that Jeremy was dead?"

Surprise flashed across Olivia's face, but Lucas could tell it was the surprise of being found out, not the astonishment people usually showed at being told that someone they knew had died. Olivia's mouth worked silently for a moment, and then, predictably, she asked, "What?"

"When did you find out that Jeremy Owusu was dead?" Lucas repeated. "You've been talking about him in the past tense this whole time."

Olivia froze, looking distinctly guilty, then stood up suddenly. "I have to go."

She headed, not to the door where Adam stood, but to the door that led into the back garden, and Lucas jumped up to intercept her before she could get it open. As she struggled with the handle, he pulled her hand away and held it tightly.

"I have to go," she repeated, trying to twist free. Panic was rising in her voice as she cried, "Let me go!"

"What are you afraid of?" Lucas asked, but Olivia didn't answer. Instead, she kicked him hard in the shin and almost managed to break away. Lucas reacted as he'd been trained, twisting her arm and wrestling her instinctively down to the floor.

"Let go of her!" Adam commanded, at the same time that Lucas realized what he was doing. Releasing her arm, Lucas said, "I'm sorry. I overreacted."

Olivia scrambled away from him until she bumped into the easy chair, then sat there on the carpet, rubbing her wrist and watching him with a mixture of wariness and terror.

"Are you afraid that somebody's going to kill you like they killed Jeremy?" Lucas asked, but Olivia didn't respond. In a flash of intuition, he added, "Or has somebody taken Owen? Is that what you're worried about?"

Olivia blinked, and her eyes were suddenly full of tears. One ran down her cheek as she continued to watch him, and she made no move to wipe it away.

"You can tell us," Adam said, then left his place by the door and came over to squat down close to her. In a low, comforting voice, he said, "We know they've bugged your house. That's why we went through this whole charade with the package, to get you out of there so you can talk to us. They can't hear you here; we swept this place for listening devices right before you came. You can talk to us, you can tell us everything."

Olivia burst into sobs, and buried her face in her hands. Adam placed a hand on her shoulder and she jerked with surprise, then shrugged it off with almost violent determination. They waited, and eventually Olivia stopped crying enough to look up. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she asked, "Are you going to arrest me?"

"We're not here to arrest anybody, we just want to find out who's responsible for the attack on the bus," Adam said, but Olivia still hesitated.

"We can help you get Owen back," Lucas added encouragingly, then came and knelt down close to her as well. "Just tell us what you know."

Scooting firmly away, Olivia wiped her eyes with her fingers, but didn't say anything. Lucas glanced over at Adam to see if his superior officer wanted to take over the questioning, but Adam gave him a signal to continue.

"So, somebody's taken Owen," Lucas stated, giving Olivia a place to start. "Did you see them at all, or did they contact you in another way? Telephone, e-mail, letter?"

"I saw them," Olivia said in a low voice, addressing Adam. She rubbed at her cheeks, and Lucas wished he were in the habit of carrying a handkerchief he could offer her. "They came to the house yesterday morning – at least one of them had a gun!"

"Yesterday?" Lucas asked, surprised. But the Death Star drone had obviously been taken from Tarla the day before that, if not earlier, and Jeremy had been getting those payments for the last six months. It was starting to look as though Olivia had had nothing to do with Jeremy before this.

"Yes, yesterday morning," Olivia repeated, still looking at Adam. "There were two of them, two men."

"What did they look like?"

Olivia shrugged. "Just average. European – middle European, I guess. Not too blond, not too dark. Not as tall as you, but not as short as me. I'm not very good with faces. One of them was wearing a Rolex watch, though, with three little circles inside the main face. Mr Blaze wears one just like it."

Typical, Lucas thought, that the eyes of an engineer should be drawn to something mechanical. "That's a good observation. So, then what happened?"

Olivia shut her eyes, perhaps to better visualize the scene. "They rang the bell and said they wanted to talk about Owen. I said I wanted to see some identification, and one of them showed me he was carrying a gun. Then they came in. Owen was showing off his Legos, and one of the men went upstairs with him. The other man came into the living room and said that they wanted a spy drone with a laser. He said he knew all about me, that I work for Tarla and build spy drones, not toys. He even knew about the Death Star and said they wanted another one, one that worked."

Lucas felt a jolt of surprise and glanced at Adam. The significance of those two words "another one" hadn't escaped his superior officer, either.

"Another one?" Lucas asked, keeping his voice gentle. "So they already had one?"

Olivia nodded, her eyes open again. "They said it didn't work, but they didn't know why, whether it had been defective before, or whether Jeremy had modified it in some way."

"What do you think?" Adam asked.

"I don't think Jeremy did anything to it, if that's what you mean. All of the prototypes needed some modifications," Olivia said. "Either the camera didn't work one hundred percent, or the laser was a bit off-target, or the thrusters reacted too slowly. They weren't exactly defective, you understand, just not up to our standard. I don't know why those men complained about it, to tell the truth. They blew up the bus, didn't they, so it must have worked well enough. Unless the bus wasn't their target, or they want to blow up another one."

She was quick, Lucas thought, and her initial panic had vanished once she'd started talking about things she was confident with. He almost regretted having to steer the conversation back to where they'd started. "Right, so, back to the Death Star. Did they give you a deadline for getting them another one?"

"They wanted me to get one by to-night," Olivia said. She took a deep breath. "But then I found out I couldn't do it all at once, and I told them last night I needed more time. They said that was cutting it very close, but I could have until Friday at eleven."

"You spoke to them last night, too?"

"They said they'd call every day at seven so I can talk to Owen and make sure he's all right." Olivia checked her watch. "I have to get back. It's getting close to seven now."

Lucas risked a quick glance at his own watch; it wasn't quite six thirty.

Sensing, perhaps, that they weren't about to let her go just yet, Olivia pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms protectively around them. "I just hope I can make them a drone that will do what they want. I don't want them to kill me, too. Or Owen."

"They told you that they'd killed Jeremy?"

"They said he was dead, and when I asked how, they said I didn't want to know," Olivia recounted.

Lucas steered the conversation back to a more relevant point. "What do you mean, 'make them a drone'?"

Olivia's face turned red and for the first time in the conversation, she looked directly at him. "Do you have to tell Mr Blaze about this? They'll kill Owen if I get the sack and can't get them what they want!"

"We'll make sure you don't lose your job," Adam said reassuringly, "if you work with us and tell us what you know and what you're doing."

Olivia took a deep breath, then murmured, "I've managed to get a few parts out of Tarla, and when I've got them all, I'm going to put them together at home. The drone will be fully functional, or as functional as I can make it, it just won't look as good as any of the official prototypes."

"So that's what you were doing last night?" Lucas asked. "You walked over to Tarla from the hospital to get parts?"

"You followed me?" Olivia asked, but her indignation disappeared as soon as it had come, and with a sigh of resignation, she nodded. Then, quite defensively, she added, "I have to do this! They've got my son – I have to keep Owen safe!"

"We know," Adam said soothingly. "It's all right."

"I'm scared," Olivia admitted, hugging her legs even more tightly. "I – I know I could get killed, or—or end up in prison for treason, but I have to do this for Owen! He has to know that I did all I could for him!"

"If you work together with us, we'll do our best to keep both you and Owen safe, and keep you out of prison as well," Lucas told her.

Olivia looked from him to Adam, who nodded agreement, then whispered, "What do I need to do?"

"Right now, nothing," Lucas said. "Just go on as before, and we'll contact you again."

Olivia gave him a wary, almost fearful look, then glanced pleadingly towards Adam, and finally said, "All right."

"I won't twist your arm next time," Lucas told her, trying to give her the reassurance that she seemed to need. "And if it's any consolation, my superior officer here is going to tell me off for that, as soon as you're gone."

Olivia's expression brightened somewhat, as though she were going to say, "Good!" and maybe even offer to join in, but she didn't speak.

"Right, then, you really should go now," Adam said, and Olivia shot eagerly to her feet as he continued, "We've had time for a friendly drink and a little chat, but anything longer will look suspicious. I'll see you out."

He picked up his crutches, keeping up the façade, then walked Olivia to the front door. Lucas grabbed his mobile and dialled. "Malcolm? The terrorists are going to call Olivia at about seven. Find a way to listen in on that call."

"I'll do my best," Malcolm replied. Cutting the connection, Lucas waited for Adam to come back. The cat sauntered in from the kitchen, jumping up onto the easy chair and putting out one leg for a wash.

"Get that cat and put it out," Adam said from the doorway. "And don't overreact next time, or I really will have to tell you off – and report it."

"It won't happen again," Lucas said. Relieved that Adam wasn't giving him more of a dressing down, he leaned over to scoop the cat from the chair. Once he had it in his arms, he unlocked the door to the rear garden and shooed the animal out, then went back for the package. Behind the houses on that side of the street, there was a public footpath, and he walked across the grass to the gate that led out to it. The tabby followed, and he had to shoo it away again as he went through. As he couldn't be seen entering or leaving the house, he'd parked a few streets away. Adam, on the other hand, would lock both the gate and the door behind him again before signalling a pre-arranged taxi out front. They'd meet back at Thames House, and with any luck, the McCallums would never know their house had been borrowed for two hours.

Xxxxx

Section D: Thanks for the "excellent!" The message included in the way that Jeremy Owusu died wasn't specifically meant for Olivia, but yes, the implication is there; these are the bad guys and if things don't turn out the way they want, they will get nasty.

leakybiro: Thank you for the "cracking chapter!" I hope this next chapter didn't disappoint, after the "sinister" cliffhanger.


	7. Chapter 7

Some of the other agents had already gone home, but Harry was still in his office when Lucas and Adam both got back to the grid. Lucas checked in with Malcolm to see if he'd got anything with the phone call, but Malcolm shook his head. "They must be using secure mobiles. I'd have to get my hands on one of them."

"I'll see what I can do," Lucas said, then went along to Harry's office.

"Olivia said that two men approached her yesterday morning wanting another Death Star," Adam reported.

"Another one?" Harry leaned forward.

"Apparently the first one was defective enough that they didn't hit their target," Lucas added. "In order to ensure Olivia's cooperation, they've taken her nine-year-old son, Owen."

Harry grimaced.

"They also seem to be under a time constraint," Adam said, and repeated what Olivia had said. "We have to assume that the bus was not their primary target."

"I know it's a long shot, but we should check the CCTV footage again," Lucas said, "and see if we can identify any of the vehicles near the bus at the time. Maybe that will give us a clue as to who the target might be."

Harry waved a hand to indicate his approval.

"I also think we should replace Olivia with an agent," Adam suggested. "The theory is that Jeremy Owusu was killed because he gave the terrorists a defective drone, but what if they would have killed him anyway? What if they're planning to kill Olivia and her son as soon as she's done what they want?."

"It's a risk," Harry agreed. "But since they've already seen her, we can't replace her completely without arousing a great deal of suspicion, and suspicion in these cases has a way of translating into death and destruction for all concerned."

"If she were hurt," Adam suggested slowly, "she'd need help. Jeremy drove his own car to meet them … what if she couldn't drive? What if somebody had to do the driving for her?"

"What's to say they wouldn't just kill the driver?" Harry asked.

"Apparently, targeting the drones isn't as easy as twiddling a joystick," Lucas remembered. "It takes someone with experience, and two hands, to guide it from a computer. If Olivia had a cast on her arm, like she'd broken it, she wouldn't be able to do that. The person helping her could take over in that respect, too, if he had that experience."

"She's in contact with the terrorists, Harry," Adam said. "They call her every evening. She could explain about her _broken_ arm at the last moment, and ask if they'd accept a replacement. They'd practically have to accept, or risk their operation completely."

"In that case …" Harry was convinced.

"It would be easiest if it were somebody close to her, someone who she can call on in an emergency," Lucas said, and searched his memory for everything he knew about Olivia. "She's got a brother who lives in Canada. He could come to visit and stay at her house instead of a hotel. Then, when she breaks her arm, she calls him to pick her up and the terrorists can listen in."

"I don't suppose by any happy coincidence he's also an engineer who works with spy drones?" Harry asked drily, but didn't wait for an answer. "Right. And since Johnny Baxter's already been seen in the neighbourhood, Lucas, you can do it."

Lucas hesitated, remembering how he'd overreacted with Olivia, and Harry caught it. "Is there a problem?"

"No," Lucas lied, keeping Harry's gaze despite the temptation to glance over at Adam. "No problem."

"Good. Then get on with it."

xxxxx

By the next morning, Lucas' legend as Scott Fenton was complete, except for the part about experience in guiding drones. Stopping first at a florist's for a bouquet, Lucas drove on to Tarla, and went to Mr Blaze's office to ask if he could spend the day getting more information about the drones. He didn't give any details, and Mr Blaze didn't ask.

"Even if your boss hadn't already briefed me on the situation," Mr Blaze told him, "you'd still have my full cooperation, of course. Ask Olivia – she's our best engineer. I'll get you a card that will give you access to everything you might need."

"That's very generous," Lucas said, and Mr Blaze smiled, a little condescendingly, then called in his PA.

The door to Olivia's office was open, and Lucas held up the bouquet before knocking.

"Flowers for you," he called out cheerfully.

Olivia looked up. "They're gorgeous, thank you!" Then she realized who was behind them, and her face fell. "Oh, it's you."

"Truce?" Lucas asked, extending the flowers. Glancing at them wistfully, Olivia suddenly put her finger to her lips, then stood up and walked past Lucas into the corridor. Motioning for him to follow, she guided him down to the toilets, looked around twice, opened the door to the ladies' room, and ushered him quickly inside. As the door shut behind her, she whispered, "Do you think they've bugged my office as well?"

"No, I don't think so. If they could have got in to bug it, they could have just taken a drone while they were here," Lucas whispered back.

"What if they gave the bugs to Jeremy and he did it before he got killed?"

Lucas considered the possibility, then said in his normal voice, "He wouldn't have needed to. They asked him to get the drone first, and they only came to you after he was dead."

"They warned me, yesterday, about talking to the government," Olivia told him. "I'm so afraid they'll find out that I have!"

"Did they do anything to Owen?" Lucas asked sharply.

Olivia shook her head, and Lucas said, "Then it was just a warning and they don't know anything. If they haven't hurt him, they probably don't even suspect."

Olivia relaxed visibly, and looked away in embarrassment. "I'm sorry I'm paranoid."

"Don't be," Lucas told her. "Paranoia can keep you alive. Let me call somebody to come over and sweep your office for bugs, though, just to make certain. Here, hold this."

He held out the bouquet for her to take while he got out his phone, and after he'd spoken with Malcolm, he hung up.

"Right, then, someone will be along very soon," he said, putting his phone away and retrieving the flowers. "In the meantime, do you have a vase for these?"

"I'm an engineer, not a florist, what would I be doing with a vase?" Olivia asked. "Come on. I'll find something."

Like a child playing at spies, she opened the door a crack and peered out, then waved her hand to indicate all clear. Lucas followed her down the corridor to a small break room. As she looked through the cupboards and finally located an empty coffee pot, Olivia asked, "These flowers – is this another one of your spy tricks? Is there a camera hidden in here somewhere, or something?"

"No tricks," Lucas said. "We're going to have to work together, and I thought it would make things easier if I gave you a formal apology for my behaviour yesterday."

Olivia stopped in the act of positioning the pot under the water tap. "Work together?"

"Very closely, but just for a day or two," Lucas said, removing the cellophane from the bouquet. "So, do you accept my apology?"

Olivia hesitated for a long moment, then said, "If it will help get Owen back, then yeah, all right."

She went back to filling the pot with water, then held it out for Lucas to place the flowers in. As he did so, she said awkwardly, "Thanks, um – I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name."

"Scott," he said, and Olivia frowned. "That's not what you told me yesterday. I would have remembered that."

"Just call me Scott," he said, giving her a gentle smile. She looked confused, but shrugged it off. "All right. Scott."

Olivia held the pot with both hands, but made no move to return to her office, or to the ladies' room. Lucas asked, "Did they let you talk to Owen last night?"

"Yes."

"And he's still all right?"

Olivia almost smiled then. "When I spoke to him, he was. On the one hand, he was excited that they let him play on the internet all day, when he wasn't watching telly, but on the other hand, he still managed to complain the whole time about not getting to go to Legoland."

"What else did they say?"

Olivia shrugged. "They wanted to know how the drone was coming along, and I said I'd have it done by to-morrow at eleven. The man asked if I could finish it by ten instead, and I said I probably could."

"Anything else?"

"Then he said I should remember not to say anything to the government to make them suspicious. I was so afraid that they _knew_!"

"What did you say?"

"I think I just said um, or something brilliant like that. Then he said, ten o'clock to-morrow and hung up, that's all."

"Ten, that's good to know," Lucas mused.

"It'll be a bit of a rush," Olivia said, then sighed. "I wish I could get an entire drone out at once, instead of only parts. It would be so much easier – I don't know how Jeremy did it!"

"I don't know, either," Lucas said. "But speaking of drones, I need to learn how to fly them."

"You?" Olivia wrinkled her nose. "Why?"

"So that I can take your place to-morrow night."

Olivia frowned. "And how do you plan on doing that without making them suspicious?"

"To-morrow, the terrorists are going to see that you've broken your arm. You—"

"What!" Olivia backed away in alarm. "You're going to break my arm!"

She hefted the coffee pot, ready to bash him if he came closer, and Lucas cursed his choice of words. Of course she'd jump to that particular conclusion, after what had happened last night! She stood there, panting with fear, no doubt expecting him to leap at her and snap the bones in her arm right then and there. Chagrined, Lucas held up his hands to show her he meant no harm, hunched down a little to reduce his height, and tried to appear less intimidating.

"No, no, no, we won't hurt you," he protested, smiling apologetically. "I'm sorry. I really didn't say that right, did I? We'll only make it _look_ like you've broken your arm. That's what the terrorists will see, but it won't be real."

Olivia hesitated, still defensively wielding the coffee pot, and Lucas went on. "You'll be acting, Olivia, just like on tv! All you have to do is let us put a cast on your arm, that's all. You won't be hurt. It won't be real. Trust me? Please?"

Eventually, Olivia lowered the coffee pot and murmured sheepishly, "All right."

"I know you're on edge," Lucas told her, putting his hands down as well. "You're going through a very stressful situation. But you've got us to help you, and this is part of our plan to get Owen back safely."

The mention of her son worked. After a moment, Olivia took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then said, "Right. So I pretend I've broken my arm. Then what?"

"Then you tell them that you can't fly the drones, you can't even drive yourself around, but your brother just happens to be staying with you, and he can do it."

"My brother lives in Canada," Olivia stated with a hint of a derisive snort, "and he can't even work his own DVD player, let alone fly a drone."

Lucas reached into his wallet and pulled out the driver's licence in Scott's name. "Your brother's going to be arriving from Calgary this afternoon."

Olivia looked at the picture on the card, compared it to Lucas's face, and sighed. "You."

"Me. That's what I meant when I said we'd be working closely together for the next day or two." Lucas tried another encouraging smile. "But in order to fool the terrorists, at least for a while, I need to know how to fly the drones."

Grimacing, Olivia said, "Oh, all right, then, _Scott_, let me put these away first and then we'll go to the workshop."

"Mr Blaze said you were the best," Lucas remarked as they left the break room, and Olivia finally smiled.

"He's much too nice," she remarked. "Did you know that he even lets me work around Owen's schedule?"

Lucas knew, but didn't say anything, and Olivia went on, "You'd expect him to be hard as nails and only concerned about profits, head of a company like this, but he really is just plain _nice_. Part of the reason I don't want to get sacked, or have to leave, is because I know I'll never find another boss like him."

"Lucky girl," Lucas told her.

Xxxxx

**Section D:** Thank you! I'm glad you liked the arm-twisting part. Lucas isn't perfectly recovered yet, although he has come a long way.

**l****eakybiro**: I'm glad you thought this had the real feel of Spooks about it. I'm always afraid that my writing is too naïve to be compared to that standard, but reviews like yours make my breakfast taste better, too! :D

Thanks for reading, everybody!


	8. Chapter 8

After depositing the flowers on the window sill in her office, Olivia led Lucas to the workshop. She had to use her card to get in, then use it again to open various locked cabinets, from which she produced not only one of the drone prototypes, but also a memory stick that she plugged into a laptop. To Lucas, she said, "This is the guidance software for the prototypes."

She also took a small microprocessor from the same cabinet and inserted it into the drone. Immediately, pictures came up on the laptop's screen, and Olivia motioned for Lucas to sit down in front of it. Leaning over his shoulder, she said, "On the left, you can see where the drone is. On the right, you can see what the drone sees."

Lucas squinted, wrinkling his forehead in confusion, and heard Olivia's amusement as she continued, "Right now it's showing you the tabletop."

She told him how to launch the drone, and he did so. It moved slowly away from the table and hovered in the air about half a meter above the surface.

"We can control the height here," Olivia said, indicating another display, "and the speed here. Because we're inside, of course, we don't want it to go very high or very fast, but once we're outside, we can change the settings."

"And this is the laser setting?" Lucas asked, indicating the rectangle in the lower right hand corner.

"Right, but there's no laser inside this drone," Olivia said. "We usually only add them for special test runs."

"So I can't hit the wrong button by accident and burn a hole through the floor?"

"The carpet, maybe, but I don't think you'd get very far through concrete. You'd be more likely to burn a hole through the window, if you were aiming at – oh!" Olivia said. Her face lit up as though she'd just received the answer to life, the universe, and everything – and it wasn't forty two.

"Oh?" Lucas prompted.

"Jeremy! I think I know how he got the drone out!" Olivia cried. Turning on her heel, she strode towards the door, and Lucas scrambled to follow. They went down the corridor to the Jeremy Owusu's office, and Olivia tried the handle. It was locked, and when she tried her key card, the reader flashed red. "Blast."

"Maybe this one will work," Lucas said, handing over his. Olivia ran it through, and glanced at him with surprised respect when the light turned green and she was able to turn the handle.

"What are we looking for?" he asked as they entered.

"Windows," she said, moving around the desk and peering closely at the glass. There was a jumble of books, binders, plants, and various bits of electronics on the windowsill, and she pulled a few of the objects away. "Hah! Look here!"

There was a distinct line across the glass that went from one side of the window to the other, and Lucas had no doubt that the pile of things had been meant to conceal it.

"He used the laser to cut through the glass!" Olivia exclaimed. "Look, you can just barely see where he's cut right near the edges, and down here at the bottom, too. He could have lifted this entire section away, flown the drone out, to his car or right to his back garden, then put the glass back, and no one would ever know."

"With a touch of superglue to hold it in place," Lucas said, pointing out a tiny blob close to one corner.

Olivia made a frustrated sound. "Why didn't I think of this? I'm so stupid! I could have had it so easy, instead of –"

"Instead of what?" Lucas asked, but Olivia shook her head in embarrassment. "Never mind. Let's get back to what we were doing."

"No," Lucas said. "Tell me. This could be important."

The worried look returned to Olivia's face, and she went to the door, glancing up and down the corridor before shutting it. "Are you really going to make sure I don't lose my job for this."

"Absolutely," Lucas said. "You're helping us catch terrorists. In fact, when this is all over, we'll praise your cooperation and your loyalty to your country, and maybe even suggest that Mr Blaze give you a little bonus for your efforts in helping us."

The part about the bonus made Olivia sigh wistfully, and then she said, "You're going to laugh, but –" She swallowed, then confessed. "I'm smuggling the parts for a drone out through the window in the ladies' loo."

Lucas managed to keep from chuckling out loud. "Go on."

"I drilled a hole in the wall outside the window and stuck a long thin piece of metal in it, like an antenna. Then I put the parts in a plastic bin big and hang them up before I leave. Later, I come back with a remote-controlled helicopter and pick up the bag."

"Ingenious," Lucas said.

"No, it's a bloody pain in the backside!" Olivia exclaimed. "The window only opens about this much. I have to sneak a stepladder into the loo and climb up before I can even get my arm out! Then the helicopter can only carry so much weight, so I can only do a few parts at a time. If I'd thought of using the laser, I could have had an entire drone out by Tuesday evening, and I'd have Owen back by now!"

Lucas didn't want to mention that she could have ended up as dead as Jeremy Owusu by then, too.

Olivia ran her fingers through her hair. "I'm so stupid. I'm supposed to be an engineer, for pete's sake! Solving problems like this is my _job_!"

"You solved it," Lucas told her. "You just did it differently from Jeremy, that's all. More creatively, if you ask me."

She looked at him in astonishment, and he went on. "Anybody can blast a hole in the side of a building, but hanging a bin bag full of parts out of the loo window and picking it up with a little helicopter, now that's creative."

By the way she smiled, Lucas could tell she wasn't used to getting compliments like that. Perhaps Tarla took her creativity for granted. He smiled back, letting her bask in the moment before finally saying, "Well, now that we know all this, we still have to get back to me flying the drones."

The smile disappeared as though it had never been, and Olivia nodded. "Yeah."

They went back to the workshop where the drone was still hovering, and Lucas slid into the seat in front of the laptop. "Right. Where were we?"

Olivia finished explaining the other directional commands, then watched him fly the drone around the workshop, giving tips, until she was called away by Mr Blaze's PA. Lucas was secretly glad that she wasn't there to see him crash it directly into the window. Fortunately, the glass didn't break, or even crack, and he made sure to keep the drone away from it from then on. Just as he was starting to think that he was getting the hang of the thing, Olivia came back in and said, "The, ah, _exterminator_ has come and gone. No bugs, apparently."

"Oh, good," Lucas said.

"And it's lunchtime."

"Already?" he asked, and looked at his watch. She was right.

As he stretched, Olivia said, "You can use your card to get into the canteen, if you want to eat there, or there are some cafes not too far away. I'll meet you back here when you're ready."

"You don't eat out?" Lucas asked, and Olivia shook her head. "I usually just have a sandwich at my desk."

"Bring it with you," Lucas said. "You can keep me company. Better yet, let me buy you lunch."

Olivia hesitated. "No, thanks all the same. I'll just eat up here, and see you when you get back."

Lucas shrugged acceptance and went out. When he returned, Olivia was sitting at her desk with her head in her hands, but straightened up when he rattled his knuckles against the open door. He couldn't see any tears, but her face looked as though she were close to crying.

"Are you all right?" he asked, coming in.

"I don't think I can do this," she whispered.

"You can do it," Lucas said. "You'll be fine."

"I have to do it," she said. "I know I have to, for Owen. But I'm scared."

Lucas laid a hand on her shoulder. "It'll be all right. I'll be here with you."

"No, that's the part I'm scared about. I'm an engineer, not an actress. I'll say something wrong and they'll be listening, they'll know it's all an act!"

"Then don't say anything," Lucas told her.

"Well, that won't sound right, either!"

"We don't have to be best friends," Lucas said. "In fact, maybe you and your brother are barely on speaking terms. You can ignore me as much as possible, and if you do say something, it could be just plain, 'Scott, I'm not talking to you.' Try it."

Olivia gave him a strange look, and Lucas repeated the phrase. "Go on, just say it once."

"Scott, I'm not talking to you," she said, then grimaced. "That didn't sound right. Anyway, why would I let my brother in the house if I weren't talking to him?"

"Because he put his foot in the door?" Lucas suggested. "Leave that part to me. Listen, Olivia. We've got to get back to work now, but think about it. 'Scott, I'm not talking to you.' Say it in your mind a few times before you go home, say it a few times this evening when I'm there, and everything will be fine."

Olivia hesitated for a long time, but finally nodded.

"Back to work?" Lucas suggested.

"Right," Olivia said, but needed another moment before she could continue. "Well. You really should learn how to control the drone outside, and practice firing the laser. I'll have to ask Mr Blaze to open the door to the roof. That's where we do the outside tests."

Always mindful of who needed to know what, Lucas slid his card out of his shirt pocket. "Let's try this first before we ask."

They gathered up the equipment from the workshop and went to the door that led to the roof. Just as Lucas was about to try his card, George Kumar came out of the nearby lift.

"The jig is up!" he called in his soft Indian accent. "I have caught you trying to smuggle a drone out of the building! Give yourselves up or I will attack you with my paper clip!"

Lucas laughed, and after a moment, Olivia's expression of horror and guilt changed to one of forced amusement.

"Very funny, George," she said, annoyance audible in her voice.

"Ms Stephens is kindly helping us with our enquiries," Lucas stated.

"Oh, dear, I don't like the sound of that." In a stage whisper, George said, "Would you like me to bust you out, Olivia? I'll distract him while you make a run for it – now what shall I use?"

Olivia rolled her eyes as George made a show of patting his pockets. "Let's see. Pen. Glasses. Keys. Card. No paper clips. Wait. I'll run to my office and get a piece of paper."

"A piece of paper?" Olivia asked, and George continued with his stage whisper. "I'll slit his throat with it. Don't you know, there really is nothing more distracting than a paper cut?"

He winked at her and walked off. Wondering if George's humour was a cover-up for something more sinister, Lucas asked, "Is he always like that?"

"Mostly," she said. "The worse a situation gets, the more he goes for the gallows humour."

She waited until George had disappeared down the corridor before adding, "I don't know why this situation should be stressful for him, though. His son hasn't been kidnapped -- he hasn't even got kids!"

Having discovered in his early morning briefing that George was juggling two lovers and managing, so far, to keep them distinctly separate from each other, Lucas privately thought George's life must in fact be incredibly stressful. He was reminded of a joke that Aleksander Dmitrovich had once told him. "What's the Russian punishment for polygamy? You're married to _two_ women!" But instead of telling that to Olivia, Lucas simply suggested, "Perhaps he was good friends with Jeremy?"

"Not more than I was," Olivia replied. "And he isn't on the verge of treason, either, like I am. Or will be, if this doesn't work. Are you sure your card is authorized for this?"

Lucas tried, and when the reader flashed green, he turned the handle of the door. Olivia said, "Wow. Mr Blaze must really trust you."

"Either that, or my boss has leaned on him for cooperation."

Once they'd gone up the stairs and through the door to the outside, Olivia moved without hesitating to a plastic table not far away that had obviously been set up for testing purposes. There were chairs, too, folded against the side of the stairwell, and Lucas set up two of them.

"Well," Olivia said, taking one of the chairs for herself. "See if you can fly the drone to your car and back."

Lucas set the drone in motion and flew it in the direction of the car park, using both screens on the laptop to orient himself. It took a bit of getting used to, after the confines of the workshop, but eventually, he figured it out. When aimed correctly, the camera showed him the licence plates of each vehicle, and eventually, he found the Mercedes that he'd checked out from MI-5's motor pool that morning.

"Good," Olivia said. "Now, bring it back to the roof."

As Lucas did so, the camera caught sight of a person walking through the rows of vehicles. The woman was waving, and Olivia explained, "Everybody does that when they see we're testing. It's part of the reason why we make these things look like toys, so they can't know it's the real thing. Can you wave back? Make the drone bob up and down a bit?"

Lucas managed to make it wobble somewhat, and the woman stopped waving and went on. After several more test runs, Olivia said, "Good work. You're learning fast, Now bring it in. I'll install the laser, and we'll give you some target practice."

After Lucas had landed the drone on the table, Olivia took it apart, installed the laser, then snapped everything back together.

"That's handy," Lucas said, "the way you can just open it up and put it back together again."

"Yes," Olivia said. "You can learn a lot from Lego. Now, the targets are down on the ground, in a special garden on that side of the building."

She pointed to the east. "It's actually one of those big chessboards made out of cement, with human sized figures, but we usually just shoot at the black squares."

Lucas guided the drone over the side of the building and immediately identified the chessboard on the screen. "Looks like somebody's already using it."

There were figures set up to show a game that was already well underway, but when Lucas used the camera to scan the area, he couldn't see anybody standing on the sidelines.

"Wait a minute, get closer to the white queen," Olivia said. "Right on top of it, if you can. There's something there."

Lucas moved the drone. Balanced on top of the plastic crown was a large piece of cardboard with a message written on it in heavy black letters.

"'Shoot me,'" he read out loud.

"George," Olivia announced, leaning back in her chair and shaking her head. "I should fly the drone to his window and zap his cactus, just for that. Well, um, Scott, you'll just have to use the spaces that are available, because I don't want the replacement costs for those things coming out of my salary."

"I'll put it on my expense account if I have to," Lucas lied. He didn't have an expense account, but he did know that Olivia used most of her salary to pay for Owen's school fees, carefully doling out the rest to meet the requirements of daily life. And if it would soothe Olivia's nerves even somewhat, he was willing to take responsibility for any damages.

It was easy enough to see why that particular prototype was still in the testing stages, as the targeting mechanism didn't work very well. After blasting several of the white squares and even one of the figures, Lucas figured out how to compensate for the misinformation, and was soon hitting his target with an accuracy rate of about ninety percent.

"You're really good," Olivia murmured.

"I've had weapons training," he said. "This is similar, except for pulling the trigger."

"Oh."

"Right," Lucas said. "Shall we try a long-range test now?"

He thought briefly about flying it to Thames House, but knew it wouldn't be a good idea. Nor could he direct it towards his own flat. In the end, Olivia pointed the drone in the direction of her home, and Lucas watched as the rooftops and trees sped by on the right-hand screen. At last, the left-hand screen showed the correct street.

"There are the McCallums, out in their garden," Olivia murmured, watching two people move around behind one of the houses. In the front garden, a small dark blob trotted across the street. "And their cat. Over there is my little jungle. It'd be nice if I could program the laser to mow my lawn."

Lucas laughed at the thought, and flew the drone up the street to Olivia's terraced two-up, two-down. Each house had a small patch of garden both front and back, none of them showed signs of excess money.

"If you can see Lego in the garden, then that's ours," Olivia said, and Lucas guided the drone over the roof and into the correct yard. When it was only six inches off the ground, he cut the power to the thrusters and watched the long, thick grass fill the screen.

"Oh, dear," he said. "The drone's just crashed and we can't get it back."

"You should have told me you were going to do that," Olivia said. "Having the drone is one thing, but I also need the software from the laptop to guide it. I could have copied it onto a memory stick, put it in the drone, and smuggled it out that way."

"Make a copy now and hang it out the loo window," Lucas suggested.

"Very funny. Power it up again and bring it back now, Scott."

"If they're watching you," Lucas said, "they'll notice if you don't go out to-night and use your helicopter to pick up the parts. It's better if you still have something you need to smuggle out."

Olivia spoke through gritted teeth. "Scott, I'm not talking to you."

xxxxx

Section D: I'm sure that Kudos will exceed all our expectations when the episodes finally air! In fact, I'm sure that their version of Lucas will be so far removed from my version that we'll hardly recognize him. He'll be much better, I'm sure. Thanks for thinking that this is plausible, anyway, and I'm glad you like the humour. :D

leakybiro: Thanks for the praise! I'm so glad you like the little things I add – watch out for more of them. :D


	9. Chapter 9

Title: The Assassin Drone

Although Scott, or whatever his real name was, had explicitly forbidden her to do anything special before he arrived that evening, such as cleaning or changing sheets, Olivia still had to go shopping after work. She'd already planned red lentil balls for supper, one of her favourite dishes that she rarely made anymore because Owen had decided he didn't like lentils and made gagging noises every time he saw them. She wondered what those men were feeding Owen there, wherever he was. Hopefully, they were giving him something he liked, but not letting him stuff himself with fast food. Then she grimaced. Why was she worried about that when she ought to be more worried about the men killing both her and Owen? Maybe it was because she was starting to trust Scott that they'd be able to catch the terrorists without getting anybody killed, thrown into prison, or just plain sacked.

Was Scott a lentil-hater, too? She hoped not. Funny, she thought, if she'd known yesterday, after that dreadful arm-twisting incident, that he'd be moving in for a night and that he didn't like pulses, she'd be going out of her way to include them in every dish she offered him. But he'd apologized so nicely this morning, with flowers, no less! Olivia couldn't remember the last time anybody had bought her flowers. Probably Andy had, sometime before his death, but it was so many years ago. And Scott had complimented her about her creativity, and encouraged her during her moments of weakness, and they'd worked so well together all day. He deserved something nice.

_Stop it_, she told herself firmly. _He's just doing his job. And anyway, lentils are nice. It's just Owen who doesn't like them._

With a sigh, Olivia reached for the package, but then swerved her trolley around to the freezers and picked out some ice cream as well, just in case.

At home, once she'd put the shopping away, Olivia went out into the back garden and picked up the drone. She glanced around guiltily as she did so, half-expecting armed policemen to emerge from every direction and arrest her for treason, or theft at the very least, but except for the wind, there was no sound and no movement, and she returned to the house unaccosted. Her heart thudding in her chest, she went upstairs and placed the drone on the desk in her room where she already had most of the parts for the one she'd been planning to assemble. If she got through this whole thing alive, with Owen, she'd have to give the parts back, but she could worry about that later. There was enough going on to-night and to-morrow, what with the arrival of her "brother," picking up the memory stick, then the actual handover and getting Owen back.

The doorbell rang at quarter past six, just as Olivia had finished eating and was about to pack up the remaining lentil balls for another day. She'd been waiting the entire afternoon for the sound of the bell, but still found herself jumping in surprise when it actually came. Scott stood there with a suitcase and a carry-on bag, dressed in more casual clothes and looking radically different than he had at work earlier that day – was he wearing an _earring_?

"Hi, sis, how about a little visit from your favourite brother?" he asked cheerfully, sticking his foot in the door before gathering up his luggage, and practically barrelling his way in.

Olivia followed him into the living room, not sure how to answer as he dumped his things in the middle of the floor and glanced around. The only phrase that came into her mind was the one she'd practiced earlier that afternoon, but it didn't seem to fit now. If she hadn't known he'd been in London earlier that day, she would have believed, if from nothing else, then from the label on his suitcase proclaiming YYC YYZ LHR, that he'd truly come straight from Calgary. How had he done that so fast?

"Speechless with joy?" he went on, sounding more sarcastic than joyous. Even his accent seemed different, less Southern and more like her own. Olivia took a deep breath and said, "Scott, I'm not talking to you."

"You don't have to talk. I'll only be staying for a while. Just until I can find my own place. We can get along until then, right, sis? One month, maximum."

"A month?" Olivia asked faintly, and then thought to add, "Scott, what are you doing here?"

"It wasn't my fault, but those bloody ungrateful ba—bosses said it was either leave or be sacked," Scott said, and his voice was realistically bitter. "So I thought I'd see if Tarla wanted my engineering skills instead. How's that sound, sis? You and me, working together in the same company? Oh, don't make that face!"

Olivia glanced at him in surprise, not having been making any face at all, except perhaps awe at his acting skills. He went on without skipping a beat. "Have you got anything to eat? Something smells good, and I'm starved. The plane had to circle around Heathrow for ages before they let us land, and then it was a nightmare trying to get my luggage."

"Red lentil balls," she said, and as he adopted the exact same expression that Owen always did when she suggested pulses, she wanted to tell him, _And don't make that face_. Her courage failed her, however, and she remained silent.

"Vegetarian? Well, if it doesn't kill me, it can only make me stronger, right?" he grumbled, and pushed by her, headed for the kitchen. "You got any beer?"

"I don't keep alcohol in the house, because of Owen," Olivia said, following. Grunting with disappointment, Scott sat down at the table, and Olivia picked up the plate of lentil balls to put them in the microwave.

"Where is Owen, anyway? It seems awfully quiet around here," Scott asked.

"He's … away," Olivia said. "Visiting a friend." She searched frantically for a better excuse, and said the first thing that popped into her head. "At Legoland."

"Legoland?" Scott repeated.

"It's half term," Olivia lied, and opened the drawer for clean silverware. "They're taking a little holiday, seeing Windsor Castle and all that, too."

"Nice friends."

The microwave beeped, and Olivia took out the plate, then put it on the table in front of him. "So you can sleep in his bed until he gets back, I guess, and then we'll have to see."

"Right." Scott stopped talking to eat, and didn't say another word until he'd finished everything on the plate, including the lettuce and parsley decorations. Olivia thought he must have liked it until he asked, "How about bangers and mash to-morrow, sis?"

"You can buy whatever you want," Olivia stated, firmly deciding not to offer him any ice cream after such an ungrateful comment. Scott smirked back at her.

The thought of him sleeping in Owen's bed reminded her that he might not want to spend the night under Bob the Builder sheets, and though Olivia struggled a little with the desire to make him do so anyway, and even throw in a handful of Lego bricks, she finally went upstairs to hunt through her linen supplies for a more neutral set. Finished, she came down again to find Scott in her living room, sitting in her favourite chair in front of her television, watching the news. Politics bored Olivia, and so she took the mobile phone from its place on the coffee table and went into the kitchen to clean up. The closer it got to seven o'clock, the more often she glanced to the phone, until she was finally sitting at the table, staring intently at it and waiting for it to ring.

As soon as it did, Olivia snatched it up, but barely had time to say hello before Owen protested, "Mum, we _still _haven't gone to Legoland!"

"Are you all right otherwise?" she asked quickly, not knowing how much time they would let her have to speak to him. Seeing Scott come through from the living room to listen, she turned away from him. "What did you have for lunch to-day?"

"A Big Mac, and I ate the whole thing!" Owen reported proudly, but then his voice changed back to something close to a whine. "We had to eat here at the house, though, and they won't even let me play in the garden!"

"I'm sorry," Olivia said. She could hear a voice in the background, and then Owen said, "No, I want to talk to Mum!" Her heart twisted and she called his name, but the next voice she heard was the man again, gently admonishing her. "Really, Olivia, we aren't starving him. We're treating him well. How are you treating our project? How's it coming?"

"Fine," she reported.

"Will it be ready by to-morrow night?"

"Yeah," she said, thinking of the fully functional drone upstairs on her desk. She glanced at Scott, but he'd picked up the notepad she kept in the hall on the telephone table, and was writing something on it.

"Ten o'clock?"

"Guaranteed," she snapped. Scott shoved the notepad at her and she read the words _Meet where_?

"Excellent," the man said. "And remember what you have to do if you ever want to talk to Owen again."

"I remember!" Olivia cried. Scott waved the page a little, and she quickly added, "And, uh, where do you want to meet—?"

But the man interrupted her before she could finish her question. "We'll call you to-morrow," he said. Disappointed, Olivia switched the mobile off.

"Who was that, your lover? You meeting someone while you've got Owen out of the house?" Scott asked.

Olivia gaped at him in hurt astonishment, unable even to summon the magic words she'd practiced. _Scott, I'm not talking to you._

"Aw, come on, sis, it was just a joke." Sensing perhaps that he'd gone too far, Scott softened his tone. "I'm sorry, really. I know there hasn't been anyone else for you since Andy died."

Olivia was still unable to answer, and after a moment, Scott asked plaintively, "Livvy? Please?"

"Don't call me Livvy," she hissed. How dare he come in here and make such accusations! Why was he acting so mean now when he'd been so nice to her at Tarla?

"Olivia. I'm sorry," he said again, but even as he bent down to write something on the notepad, he added, "Look, I'd better get out of your hair for a while, huh? Where's the nearest pub?"

When he held the page up for her to see, Olivia read, _Is this __your __phone?_

Confused at the sudden change of topic, she shook her head, and saw him put a finger to his lips before she could open her mouth. Instead, she reached for the pen. He held it out, but reminded her, "Pub? Beer? Come on, Olivia, you won't have to talk to me if I'm not here."

Awkwardly, she gave him directions to a pub that she drove by each day when taking Owen to school, then scrawled simply, _They__ gave it to me_.

"Right." Scott nodded, then ripped the pages from the notebook and crumpled them into his pocket. Recovering slightly from the shock, Olivia thought about why he'd been writing notes in the first place, which reminded her of the drone, and the memory stick that she still had to pick up. "Actually, Scott, I have to go out this evening. You can stay here if you want."

"No, that's all right," he said breezily. "I want a good beer, not that Canadian swill. Have you got a spare key, in case I get back before you do?"

"Yeah," Olivia said, and went out into the hall. She kept a second set of keys on a hook above the telephone, and handed them over.

"You're a good sis," he said. "Olivia." With a smile, he pocketed the keys, and Olivia saw that he was holding the mobile phone in his other hand. She didn't ask why he was taking it, and he didn't say anything, just went out. After he'd shut the door behind him, the house was oddly silent.

Olivia went slowly upstairs to detach the helicopter's battery from its recharger and return it to where it was needed, then placed the helicopter in the carrier bag and took it out to the car. She passed Scott on the street, but he didn't wave, and neither did she.

She'd already noticed the wind that afternoon, but now it was worse, and Olivia could see black clouds rolling in from the west. The good weather would be over soon, she thought randomly, not that it mattered. The only important thing now was getting the memory stick, handing over the drone, and getting Owen back. The stiff breeze made her worry, however, and she trained her binoculars on the Tarla building. The plastic bin liner was waving wildly, but at least it was still attached to the metal pole. Olivia started up the helicopter and sent it on its way, acutely aware of every gust that shook the light machine and nudged it just that little bit off course.

When the helicopter had reached the roof of the Tarla building, Olivia had to wait out two successive blasts of wind before deciding it was safe to make it descend. She only needed a minute, just one single minute without a breeze, but her prayers were not answered. Just as she was lining up the helicopter's hook with the handles of the plastic bag, an especially forceful gust of wind knocked the helicopter diagonally towards the side of the building. One of the rotors hit, folding immediately under the force, and making way for the other two to slam into the brick as well. The helicopter fell, taking the metal pole and the plastic bag down with it.

"No," Olivia whispered, too shocked to scream. "Oh, no!"

She aimed her binoculars lower, but there were bushes and other things at ground level, and she couldn't tell where the wreckage had landed. One thing she could see, however, was a camera at the corner of the building, pointing at the pavement, and she realized that, with her bad luck, the helicopter's crash would have been visible on CCTV. Highly visible. Olivia stuffed the binoculars and the remote control piece into the carryall, then hurried back to her car.

Owen, she thought as she ran. They were going to kill Owen because of her mistake, because of her stupidity. There wouldn't be a second chance to get the memory stick out of Tarla, not now that security had seen how she'd done it. The drone was useless without the software, so they'd probably kill her as well, and Scott. Scott! She'd have to tell him somehow that the operation was off, there was no point in him accompanying her and getting killed for his pains. He'd just have to let her go alone.

She came to her car and got in, working the controls automatically as she planned ahead. She wouldn't tell the men on the phone that she didn't have the software. She'd wait until she saw Owen one last time. Maybe there'd be a chance to hug him, or at least to say sorry and good-bye. Then she'd confess, and take the consequences. As long as she and Owen were together, she wouldn't mind so much.

Olivia didn't remember the drive home, or her entry into the house. The next thing she was aware of was checking the living room to see if Scott had come back yet, which he hadn't, and then going upstairs to her desk. Knowing she wouldn't be able to call her mother to say good-bye, she sat down to write an explanation. The men had said they were watching her e-mails and her post, but she told herself that if she wrote it by hand, she could simply leave it in the house for her mother to find, later. As she wrote, the words simply flowed, detailing everything that she had experienced since Tuesday morning, including the helicopter crash, but every so often, she would stop and wonder why she wasn't crying. She should be grieving, she thought, not coldly making arrangements like this, but the tears did not come.

Just as she was finishing, she heard the door open downstairs and Scott call out her name. She didn't answer, just continued to write, and eventually, he came upstairs. "Oh, there you are."

"Here I am," she said. She'd included a paragraph about Scott and how she wasn't going to get him killed as well, and now she offered him the pages to read. "I was just working on … a few things."

It seemed to take forever for him to peruse her account of how she hadn't been able to get the memory stick, but finally, he said, "Olivia, I don't know what to say."

"It doesn't matter," Olivia said, turning away with a shrug.

"This is really good," Scott went on. "Are you going to submit this somewhere? Because seriously, you should consider becoming a writer in your spare time!"

What on earth was he talking about? Olivia shot him a confused look, and Scott indicated the ceiling, then put a hand to his ear as though listening. Of course! He was spinning a story for the bugging devices.

"I know you're thinking, what spare time? But Owen will get older," Scott said. "Things won't always look the way they look right now."

Was he trying to tell her something? Olivia searched his face for clues to what he meant, and he smiled encouragingly.

"You could consider it, anyway. Mills and Boone would be lucky to get someone like you," he said, then yawned quite realistically. "In the meantime, I'm going to unpack. Jet lag is catching up with me."

He went out. Normally, Olivia would have been insulted by the Mills and Boone comment, but now she found she couldn't care less. Folding the pages twice, she stuffed them into an envelope, and wrote her mother's name on it. She was still trying to decide where to put it when Scott shouted in frustration, then came back into her room. "I don't believe it!"

"What?" she asked dully, because she knew he expected an answer, not because she was interested in whatever he had to say.

"I forgot my sponge bag! It's got everything in it – my razor, my toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, everything! I know I had it in the bathroom right before I went to the airport – I must have left it there! Can you drive me to the nearest shop that's open?"

"You can take my car." Emotionlessly, Olivia handed over the car keys and gave him directions to the Safeway on King Street. With a cheery, "Thanks, sis!" he went out, leaving Olivia still sitting at her desk. Eventually, she remembered that she had wanted to return the parts for the spare drone, and went downstairs to find a bag to put them in. Once she'd finished, she wrote _Please return to Tarla Industries_ _and tell Mr Blaze I'm sorry_ on a piece of paper, then taped it to the bag and put it by the keyboard of her computer.

Unwilling to spend the last night of her life cleaning or doing anything else that could be classified as domestic, Olivia thought of the latest batch of photos she'd taken of Owen, and went downstairs to find them. They were still in their envelope from the film company, but she took them out and began to set them into Owen's album, using the little stick-on corners to hold them in place, and wrote captions underneath. Halfway through, she realized that the album would be a good hiding place, and put the note to her mother just inside the back cover.

Although she wasn't much of a photographer, she thought that one or two of the photos had turned out quite well. She could see glimpses of Andy in Owen's face, and found herself comparing every picture of her son to the portrait of her husband on the wall. She'd never doubted there was a heaven, and that Andy was in it. They'd be seeing him again soon, she thought, and hoped he'd be proud of Owen, and of her for doing her best to raise him alone.

When she'd finally finished, she tucked the negatives between the first two pages, in case her mother or anybody else wanted copies, then left the album in plain sight on the coffee table and went back upstairs. She had just finished getting ready for bed when she heard Scott come in. Opening her bedroom door, Olivia waited as he climbed the stairs.

"Nasty weather!" he said. "But here, I got you this."

He came over to where she was standing and handed her a box of chocolates with a memory stick balanced on top.

"What's this?" Olivia asked, holding up the stick in utter bafflement.

"Exactly what it looks like," he said with a smile. "Cadbury's Milk Tray. For putting up with me. Sweet dreams, sis."

Unable to believe it, Olivia went to her desk and patted the functional drone, looking questioningly at him. He nodded and gave her a thumbs up sign, then went out again. Sinking down on the bed, Olivia felt the eerie calm she had experienced all evening shatter. A myriad of emotions welled up inside her; confusion, relief, hope, and gratitude, but also a strange sense of letdown and even a touch of disappointment that she wasn't going to see Andy again as soon as she'd thought. Unable to do anything else, she burst into tears and quietly sobbed until she fell asleep.

xxxxx

**leakybiro**: So glad you like George! I had to rein him in several times, as he was attempting to run away with the story. But sometimes less is more. Thanks for the "cracking chapter." :D

**Section D**: Well, they do say, write what you know, and with two sons of my own, _I know Lego_. :D And yes, now we know how Jeremy got the drone out, and if Olivia had done it the same way, there'd be two more bodies for MI-5 to discover and the story would pretty much be over. Thanks for your reply!

Thanks so much for reading, everybody!


	10. Chapter 10

Lucas awoke with a start, his heart racing. He'd been dreaming about Lina, he remembered. He'd been inside a prison camp, or some other place with a barbed wire fence that separated him from her, and the only way to reach her was to crawl through a narrow tunnel. He'd started to worm his way through, and could even see her silhouette in the light at the other end, but then the tunnel had collapsed in front of him, pinning his forearms in the rubble.

He dreamed a lot about his arms. Ever since gangsters from the Russian Mafia had broken both of them in December, Lucas often had nightmares in which his arms were injured, caught in something that immobilized them, or even amputated. This had been one of the more benign versions of the theme, but it had still left him both shaking and shaken. And as for the part about Lina, well, he didn't need Freud or Jung or anybody else to tell him what that meant.

Pushing the dream away, Lucas got out of bed. He'd forgotten to close the curtains the night before, and the room was light enough that he didn't need to switch on the lamp. Halfway to the door, however, his bare heel came down on something sharp, and he cried out in pain and surprise. He lifted his foot to see what it was, and spotted a small blue piece of plastic, just visible against the blue carpet. Grimacing, Lucas kicked the Lego away under the bed and limped on. He was halfway across the hall when Olivia opened the door to her bedroom and glanced out.

"Did you scream?" she asked.

"I stepped on a Lego," Lucas stated, and Olivia winced in sympathy. "I swear those things get out and wander around at night. I'm always tripping over them, too. Are you permanently crippled?"

"Not permanently," Lucas said. "Maybe next time, though."

"Mm." Olivia had lifted her gaze from his foot, and now she was squinting at his chest, staring quizzically at it until Lucas glanced down as well. He hadn't thought about putting on a shirt, and the burn scars left behind after his torture were clearly visible. Lina had been horrified when she'd first seen them, because she had understood the cause. Olivia simply looked puzzled, as though she were unable to decide what kind of medical procedure had left such odd tracks behind, but Lucas still felt embarrassed.

"Ladies first?" Lucas asked, prepared to let her go ahead to the bathroom while he got properly dressed. She shook her head, and he shrugged and went in. When he came out, she had pulled on an ugly brown bathrobe, old enough to be a hand-me-down from her father. "Are you coming to Tarla with me to-day, Scott?"

"No," he replied. The plan was for him to stay in the house, at least in the afternoon, so he'd be there when the call about her broken arm came through. "I thought I'd lay about for the weekend and wait until Monday before even thinking about work again."

"Then I can have the first shower," Olivia stated, and Lucas stepped aside to make room for her, relieved that she hadn't seen his back as well.

To help pass the time after Olivia went to work, Lucas opened the garden shed and found the lawn mower, then cut both the front lawn and the back. It was difficult, because the grass was wet after the night's rain, but it was better than sitting in front of the telly watching inane programs. Once finished, Lucas went out for Indian takeaway and ate it while leafing through the photo album he'd found on the coffee table that morning. Owen was a cheerful boy, grinning happily in every picture, and Lucas thought back to the baby that Lina had miscarried almost nine years ago. If the child had lived, he or she would be just about a year younger than Owen now, Lucas realized. Lina had thought it was a girl, but Lucas thought longingly of a son, even though he was sure that treading on Legos hurt more than tripping over a Barbie doll.

The awaited telephone call finally came at shortly past three, and Lucas hurried from the living room into the hall to pick up the receiver. "Olivia Stephens' residence."

"Scott," Olivia said. "I need your help. I've broken my arm and I need you to pick me up."

She'd been right when she said she wasn't an actress; she sounded as though she were reading aloud from a book. Knowing that Tim had been scheduled to escort her from Tarla and drive her to the hospital, Lucas wondered if he had coached her in what to say, or had even written it down for her.

"You broke your arm?" Lucas asked. "How'd you do that?"

"Uh, the stairs were wet and I slipped down them?" Uncertainty quavered so audibly in her voice that Lucas winced.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"Central Middlesex Hospital. I'll wait for you at the northwest entrance."

Lucas repeated the details for the listening devices, then added, "Don't worry, sis, big brother will take care of you."

"Do you have to call me sis all the time?" she asked, sounding completely normal, and Lucas laughed silently. "I'm on my way. And, Olivia?"

"Yes?" she asked warily.

"I'm glad you're talking to me again."

Olivia hesitated, obviously not knowing what to say, and Lucas made it easier on her by hanging up. He then dialled a certain number to order a taxi, and when it came, he was pleased to see a familiar face behind the wheel.

"Hello, Malcolm," he said, sliding into the back seat.

"Hello, Lucas," the older man replied, looking searchingly at him in the rear view mirror. "Did you get your ear pierced like I told you to?"

Lucas reached one hand up to his earlobe and fingered the gold stud that he'd got yesterday afternoon before appearing at Olivia's doorstep. "Yes."

"Good, because I've got a miniature two-way in a very masculine earring, just for you."

"Oh, thank you," Lucas said in a slightly exaggerated way, and Malcolm smiled. "We already had one, but it was in a diamond, and that would have been just a little too flashy. And by the way, there's been some news."

"What?"

"The River Police pulled the body of Emily Owusu out of the Thames earlier to-day," Malcolm said. "Apparently she's been dead since approximately Monday night or Tuesday morning."

"Jeremy's mother?" Lucas asked.

"It would have been her seventieth birthday next week," Malcolm added.

"It couldn't have been an accident, could it?" Lucas wondered. "Because all this time we've been assuming that Jeremy Owusu was working with the terrorists for money, not because they'd taken a member of his family hostage."

"Connie's looking into the money trail," Malcolm said. "You're supposed to keep on with your operation until further notice."

When they arrived at the hospital, Malcolm pulled into a parking space, then turned to Lucas. "Don't get out, just open the door. It'll be easier for me to inject you, and if you faint, I won't have to pick you up off the ground afterwards."

"I don't faint at the sight of needles," Lucas said, but Malcolm was already getting out of the car and didn't answer. He got a case out of the boot, set it on the ground by the tyre, and flipped the lid open. Lucas craned his head for a look, and watched Malcolm pull on rubber gloves, then take a syringe out of a padded slot, and remove the casing from the needle.

"The microprocessor is floating in a bit of saline solution," Malcolm explained. "Put your arms on the back of the seat in front of you, and lay your head down on them. I'm going to inject this right behind your ear."

Lucas rested his forehead on his hands. Malcolm pulled a lock of his hair back, then slid the needle into the skin over his skull and gently pressed the plunger.

"There," Malcolm said. "Just like a bone-anchored cochlear implant. Now, as long as your new earring is this close to the microprocessor, you'll be able to hear us and we'll be able to hear you. I'll put it in for you, if you like."

"Please." Lucas winced as Malcolm undid the gold stud, and the older man said, "Where did you get this done? It's infected already."

"A little shop close to Heathrow," Lucas replied, gritting his teeth at the insertion of the small hoop. "It was apparently less hygienic than it looked."

"You'll have to get it checked as soon as possible. I'm afraid I didn't bring any first aid gear with me." Malcolm leaned a bit nearer to Lucas' ear and said, "Testing, testing. TerraNova to Endurance, over."

Connie's voice sounded as though Lucas were hearing her through one-sided headphones. "Endurance to South Pole. Tell Malcolm all clear."

"South Pole?" Lucas asked, grinning at the code name, then looked up. "Connie says all clear."

"That's Endurance speaking, not Connie." Malcolm corrected him with a frown. "Right, here's a tracking device for the drone and you're all set, South Pole. Go rescue our damsel in distress."

"Thanks, Malcolm." Lucas got out of the taxi, stuffed the device into the pocket of his jeans, and went off to the entrance of the hospital. Olivia was pacing back and forth just outside the range of the motion sensors that opened the doors, and hurried over as soon as she spotted him. Her left arm was not only in a cast from mid-hand to above her elbow, it was also supported by a sling, and Lucas wondered if Tim had perhaps not overdone things a bit. Still, the message was clear; she couldn't drive or work a laptop with both hands, and that was what they needed to convey.

"Have you got a new earring?" Olivia asked, staring at it, and Lucas smiled. "Yeah."

"Is it a tracking device?" She lifted her arm slightly. "Your friend Chris put one in here."

"No," Lucas said, but didn't explain what it really was, or that he also had a tracker in his watch. "Shall we take the taxi to your car?"

"We can walk, it's not very far." Olivia turned to go inside, and Lucas followed as she strolled confidently from one entrance of the hospital to the other. From there, it was almost a ten minute walk to the Tarla car park.

"I was scared to go to work to-day," Olivia said awkwardly as they strolled. "I thought they'd find the wreckage of the helicopter and trace it back to me, and I'd get sacked."

"I took care of that," Lucas told her.

"I thought so. I know, it must be part of your job, and all that. But I just wanted to say, thanks." She glanced sideways at him, and Lucas smiled.

"It's all right," he told her, and she smiled hesitantly back. After a moment of silence, she suddenly asked, "Scott, how did you get the memory stick back?"

"I could tell you," Lucas said, "but then I'd have to kill you."

Olivia glanced sharply at him, then looked chagrined when she realized he was teasing. "Sorry, I shouldn't have asked. I should have known it was top secret and all that."

"All I can say is, we didn't smuggle it out through the window in the ladies' loo." Lucas watched, amused, as Olivia blushed and looked away. He didn't tell her that Tarla's security had called MI-5 to report the strange incident. He also didn't tell her that the MI-5 surveillance team had been watching the crash, too, and had seen Olivia's reaction. They'd set up a quick operation to retrieve the memory stick, only to discover that it had been shattered, and Ben had used Lucas' cardkey, along with a fake silicon fingerprint, to infiltrate the Tarla building and get a new one. Lucas' role had been nothing more exciting than finding an excuse to leave Olivia's house yet again, driving to the store, buying a few articles, then literally bumping into Ben in the car park and letting the younger man drop the memory stick into his shopping bag.

Once they'd arrived at the car, Olivia tried to hold her handbag open with her "injured" left hand while searching through it with her right. "I know my keys are in here somewhere."

"Shall I help?" Lucas offered, but Olivia shook her head and produced them only a moment later. She unlocked the car, then handed over the ring. "Here."

Lucas went around and opened the passenger door for her, and she gave him an astonished glance, obviously surprised at his courtesy. Except for a few directions which Lucas really didn't need, she was quiet all the way back to the house, but when she got out, she said, "Oh, Scott, you didn't have to mow my lawn!"

"I wanted to," Lucas told her, and she said, "Don't tell me, your last job was impersonating a gardener."

Lucas just grinned, and led the way into the house.

The rest of the afternoon passed slowly, and when it was suppertime, Lucas could see by the way she leaped off the couch that Olivia was as glad as he was for the chance to get up and do something.

"I can cook spaghetti if you'll help a little," she suggested, leading the way into the kitchen. Opening one of the cabinets, she took out a package of noodles, then added, "I've got a jar of sauce here somewhere."

"Let's get take-away," Lucas suggested, and even as Olivia sighed, he added, "I'll pay for it, just tell me what you want. Chinese? Indian?"

Olivia hesitated, and Lucas urged, "Come on, you've just broken your arm, you shouldn't have to worry about cooking."

"I can't afford to eat take-away every day," Olivia informed him, turning to the next cabinet. "There!"

With the ease of much practice, she grabbed a long-handled spoon from the drawer, then reached up and used it to flick the jar of sauce off the top shelf so that she could catch it with her left hand. Lucas could see, however, that she had forgotten about her arm being in a sling, and was not surprised when the jar smashed on the floor.

"Blast!"

"Why didn't you ask somebody taller to reach it for you?" Lucas asked, and when Olivia gave him a scathing look meant to communicate that she was used to dealing with things on her own, he added impishly, "Livvy."

"I told you not to call me that," she snarled, then yanked open the drawer again, pulled out a table knife, and began trying to slip the blade into the space between her hand and the cast. "And this thing _itches_!"

"Don't do that," Lucas told her, taking the knife away in case she should hit the tracking device with it. "Just think of something else and the itch will go away. I'll clean up this mess and then we'll get some Indian food, all right?"

"I don't want Indian food!" Olivia screeched. She sounded close to tears. "And what do you know about broken arms anyway?"

"I broke both my arms in December," Lucas said.

"Oh, right," Olivia replied sarcastically.

"I had casts on from here to here," Lucas said, demonstrating. "I had to get my – my girlfriend to wash my hair every other day, and cut my food so I could eat it without a knife, and do all sorts of little things for me that I'd always taken for granted before. But the worst part was the itch!"

Olivia scowled. "Scott, why is it that whatever I do, you have to do it bigger and better? Or worse, as the case may be?"

"That's what big brothers are for," Lucas said, smiling. "Now go sit down in the living room and I'll worry about supper."

She went. Lucas cleaned up the spaghetti sauce, then called for pizza. When he went into the living room, Olivia was sitting in the easy chair, holding the mobile phone and staring at it as though trying to communicate with Owen by transmitting thoughts over the network. The pizza came, and in between bites, Olivia continued to stare at the phone. Lucas found that he was waiting, too; he'd taken the phone to Malcolm the night before and had it bugged so that MI-5 could listen in and hopefully locate the origin of the call. With luck, they could send in the SAS, free Owen, and catch all the terrorists at once.

With a great deal of luck.

xxxxx

Section D: I'm so glad I was able to reach your emotions with the previous chapter. Thanks for reading and replying.

leakybiro: Thanks for "brilliant, believable and cracking" and everything else! :D


	11. Chapter 11

The phone rang at exactly seven, and Olivia nearly dropped it in her eagerness to snatch it up and press the button. "Owen?"

"Owen is here," the man said. "I'll put him on."

"Mum," Owen exclaimed a moment later. "They said we can go to Legoland to-morrow!"

"To-morrow?" Olivia asked stupidly. "Are you all right, Owen?"

"'Course!" he replied, rushing through the answer in his eagerness to get to what he considered important. "Mickey let me look at the website! I can design and program my own robot with Lego Mindstorms!"

"That sounds fun," Olivia said, trying not to let the sinking feeling in her stomach sound in her voice. To-morrow. It would all be over to-morrow, and Owen would be home again. Small wonder the men felt safe in telling him he could go to Legoland then.

"Yeah, and –" Owen's voice disappeared abruptly, and the man came on again. "Olivia. How's the project coming along? Is it finished already?"

"Yes," she replied, looking down at the paper with notes that Scott had written for her.

"Lucky for you that you got it done before you broke your arm," he said. "You led us to believe that it wouldn't be finished until the last minute."

Olivia caught her breath in fear, even though she knew they must have been listening, then said, "I've been working on it …"

"I'm sure you have," the man went on. "We want you to come to a street near Ravenscourt Park." He gave her an address. "Do you know where that is?"

"I'll find it," Olivia said. "But I can't—"

"Be there before nine o'clock to-night. Bring the project, and the mobile."

"Right." Olivia saw Scott motion urgently to the paper and hastily added, "But I can't drive! I broke my left arm! And you'll need someone to fly the dr—the project—I can send my brother instead."

"Your brother can fly the project?" the man asked.

"Yes!" Olivia exclaimed. "He—"

The man interrupted her and said, "Don't say anything to him about it. Just wait there, I'll call you back."

He hung up, and Olivia disconnected on her end as well. Scott asked, "What did you want to ask me? Something about a project?"

"It might be nothing," Olivia said. "I'm not sure, I'm waiting for more details. If I need you, I'll tell you."

"Fair enough," Scott said, and turned on the television to find yet another news program.

The mobile phone rang again a few minutes later. Waiting for Scott to switch the television off, Olivia clicked the right button. "Yes."

"Your brother can bring you," the man said. "Don't tell him what's going on, just tell him you need him to drive you, that's all. You both come, and remember, the project and the mobile, too."

"Right," Olivia said, but the man had already hung up. She looked at Scott. "I need you to drive me somewhere to-night."

"Where?"

"It's near Ravenscourt Park," she said. "At about nine. Before nine, that is."

"Why? What's going on?"

Olivia frowned. "It's, ah—" She could feel her face burning with humiliation as she tried to think of a suitable excuse. Blast. Why couldn't she be as glib as Scott? "Ah—I'm meeting a friend, and I just need you to drive me there, that's all."

"Oh. Right." Scott waited a second, then asked, "Is it a girlfriend? Is she single?"

"No," Olivia said.

"No, what? Not a girlfriend, or not single?"

"It's not a girlfriend."

"Well, does he have a single sister? A single female cousin?"

Olivia sighed. "Scott …"

"A bloke can ask, can't he?" Scott changed his tone of voice. "All right, all right, I'm watching the news now."

Olivia went upstairs to search the internet for directions to the address, printing out a little map so they wouldn't get lost. She didn't know about Scott, but she'd never been in the area aorund Ravenscourt Park. Then she pulled out the carrier bag she had used for the helicopter, found the memory stick and slipped it into a side pocket. She was just picking up the drone, balancing it carefully in one hand to lift it into the bag when Scott came into the bedroom. He held one finger to his lips, then showed her a piece of paper. On it was written simply, _tracker._ Startled, Olivia looked up, and Scott extended a tiny device on the palm of his hand.

Olivia watched as he opened the drone and found a hiding place for the tracker in the gap between one of the thrusters and the outer wall, then snapped it shut. Once he'd placed the drone inside the carrier bag, he took it by the handles and led the way downstairs again. The television was still on, and Scott sat down, watching as though fascinated. Olivia sat down as well, but was unable to feel anything near the patience that Scott was exhibiting. Instead, she alternated morose glances at the screen with morose glances at Scott and anxious glances at her watch. It seemed like forever until she could say, "Let's go."

Olivia tucked the mobile phone into a side pocket on the carrier bag, and Scott took it out to the car, settling it carefully on the backseat. They drove in silence; Olivia didn't know what to say, so she just sat there, staring out of the window and worrying about Owen. They were just turning into the correct street when there was a familiar ring tone from behind her, and Olivia realized it was the phone. Twisting around in her seat, she reached out her right arm, but couldn't get the pocket open. "Blast! Stop the car!"

Scott put the brakes on, and Olivia jumped out, throwing the back door open and almost tearing the zipper apart in her haste to get to the phone. Thankfully, it was still ringing, and she flipped it open. "Yes! Hallo!"

"Hallo, mum," Owen said.

"Owen?" Olivia glanced up to where Scott was looking at her. Behind them, another car had pulled up and stopped as well.

"Mum, there's a man there," Owen said. "You're supposed to give him the project."

Owen's voice became fainter, but she could clearly hear him ask, "Did I say that all right?" Looking over her shoulder, Olivia straightened up. Two men had gotten out of the car behind them and were approaching.

"Are these the friends you're supposed to be meeting, or did we have a fender bender without me noticing?" Scott asked from inside the car, but Olivia had no chance to reply. Both men were holding guns.

"Give me the phone," the man closest to her demanded in a distinct accent. Hastily, Olivia handed over the mobile.

"Now, where is the project?"

Unable to take her eyes off his gun, Olivia indicated the back seat, and the man commanded, "Get it out."

Bending down slightly, acutely aware of her sling and the cast around her left arm, Olivia fumbled for the handles and pulled the bag out. The other man took it from her, looked inside, and nodded. Lifting the phone to his ear, the first man said, "I have it," and gave the other man a jerk of his head. As the other man carried the bag back to their car, the first man told Olivia, "Get back in."

She moved to get into the back seat, but he said, "In the front," and she changed direction. Next to her, Scott was holding both hands up and away from the steering wheel, and watching the action in the rear-view mirror. The first man crawled into the back seat, keeping his gun visible, and scooted over so that he was directly behind Scott. "Drive," he said. "Turn left at the corner."

"What's going on?" Scott asked. "Olivia, who is this man?"

"Shut up or I will shoot her," the man said, and Olivia felt the skin crawl on the back of her neck.

xxxxx

**Section D**: No, these people aren't to be messed with. And as for Lucas and Olivia, hmm. If they did get together and "have something," he'd have to explain about the torture eventually. Could be interesting. Thanks for reading and replying!

**leakybiro**: Thanks, I'm glad you like the depth I'm trying to give this story. It's always a fine line to walk between "not enough detail" and "burying the reader in an avalanche," I think, but if I read your comment right, I seem to be succeeding, which makes me very happy. And yes, I seem to remember that Malcolm was a bit of a stickler for call sign protocol. :-)


	12. Chapter 12

Lucas drove in silence, and after they had turned a few corners, he recognized Ravenscourt Park ahead. In his ear, Malcolm was silent, too; he'd reported earlier that they had traced the origin of the call, but had not found Owen or anybody else there. Now there was nothing more to say. The team was dependent on the trackers and any information Lucas could give them.

"Find somewhere to park," the man said. Lucas mentally thanked the car ahead that was just pulling out, and backed neatly into the space. As soon as he'd stopped the engine, the man said, "Now get out, both of you."

Lucas got out, automatically tucking the keys into his jeans pocket. The man had slipped his left arm around Olivia's waist as though embracing her, but Lucas could tell by Olivia's stiff movements and the faintly sick look on her face that the man was jamming the gun into her side. The man made eye contact with him and commanded, "Walk in front of us. Straight across the park to the other side. No talking."

"Ravenscourt Park, walking west," Lucas whispered as he walked. As soon as the other end of the park became visible, the man said, "Go to the white van."

"White van," Lucas repeated. "License plates not visible."

As they approached, the van's side door opened and another man got out. Scanning the van in the quick moment before the man slid the door shut again, Lucas was unable to see anybody else, and assumed the man was the driver.

"Take off your clothes," the first man said, and Lucas glanced back at him, pretending surprise. "Take off my clothes?"

The man let go of Olivia and gave her a little push so that she stumbled in Lucas' direction, then clarified, "Both of you. Everything. Stark naked."

"Look, I don't know what's going on here, but I'm not –" Lucas started to protest. The first man lifted his gun and aimed at Lucas' heart, and Lucas raised his hands in surrender. "All right. Stark naked."

He started unbuttoning his shirt. Olivia hesitated only until the man pointed the gun at her, then gulped and stepped out of her shoes. Lucas stripped down to his pants, then glanced over and saw that Olivia, hampered by her sling, had only managed to wrestle her jeans off.

"Let me help her," Lucas said, but the gun man waved the pistol at his pants. "Forgot something?"

Lucas stepped out of them, glanced at the man again for permission, then reached out to slip the sling over Olivia's neck. Blushing, Olivia looked away, and Lucas saw that something had caught her attention. As he unbuttoned her blouse, he followed her gaze, and saw that an older man was walking a dog about fifty meters behind the man with the gun, and staring curiously at them.

"We've got company," the driver of the van said in Russian, and Lucas kept his face expressionless, trying to appear as though he didn't understand. Instead, he watched the gun man turned to confront the dog-walker. A glance was all it took, and as soon as the older man registered the gun, he picked up his pace until he was practically running away.

_Don't call the police_, Lucas urged him silently. _Don't ruin this! _ He carefully guided Olivia's blouse over the cast on her arm, then unhooked her bra in the back and slipped it off, too. As he tugged on her panties, she shivered violently, more from fear, Lucas thought, than cold. Lucas wanted to catch her eye and give her an encouraging smile, but she was staring determinedly away from him. Lastly, he pulled at her socks, and she lifted each foot in turn for him to remove them.

"Lean against the van," the man said. "Arms and legs apart."

Wondering idly if there were any more dog-walkers out there staring at them, and if there'd been enough time for MI-5 to get an agent in place here at the park, Lucas spread his arms and legs and supported himself against the van. Olivia was slower because of her cast; she lifted it awkwardly above her head and leaned it against the van, then rested her forehead on it as she stretched her legs and her other arm. Her hand came in contact with Lucas' elbow and she recoiled. He wished she hadn't; the touch of her fingers had been ... nice.

The driver of the van came around behind them, pulling on plastic gloves as he did so. In prison, Lucas had been body searched so many times that he'd thought it would never bother him again, but undergoing it stark naked in a public park in the middle of London brought a new and unexpected level of humiliation to the process.

"Look at this," the driver said, running his hand down Lucas' back, and Lucas felt their stares boring into his scars.

In English, the gun man said, "You like it rough, huh?" He made a noise like cracking a whip, and both men laughed.

"No, I don't," Lucas corrected him, aware of Olivia's horrified expression. "And I'll never get caught smuggling drugs in Thailand again, either."

Olivia's face was already red; she bit her lip and stared down at the ground. The gun man translated Lucas' comment into Russian, and the driver laughed, then turned to her next. Lucas heard her try unsuccessfully to suppress a sound of discomfort.

Still speaking Russian, the gun man said, "Take their watches and all their jewelry. Kostya said everything."

The driver stripped off his gloves and unbuckled Olivia's watch, tossing it to the ground, then undid a necklace from around her neck. As he held up the two wedding rings hanging from a simple chain and threw it away, Olivia opened her mouth as though to cry out, then clamped it firmly shut. Lucas was tempted to remove his own earring, but that would have drawn unwanted attention, so he stood motionless and simply waited. In an attempt to not only distract the man from the infection and lessen the chances of him deducing that the earring was suspicious, but also to give Malcolm and the other agents a clue to the identity of the terrorists, Lucas said, "Are you speaking Russian? I met a Russian girl once."

"Shut up," said the gun man at the same time as Malcolm asked, "They're Russian?"

"Yeah, she wanted to marry me," Lucas went on, trying not to wince as the driver fumbled with the clasp, and hoping that Malcolm had at least been able to hear his affirmative answer before the earring came off. The gunman punched him hard in the kidney. "I said, shut up."

"What's he talking about?" The driver flicked the earring away and removed Lucas' watch.

"Nothing," the gun man replied. "You done? Then get the saw and get that cast off, too. No, wait, we'll get them in the van first. Too many perverts around here, walking their dogs, one of them's going to phone the police soon."

"Yeah," the driver affirmed.

"Step back," the gun man commanded in English. "When we open the van, you get in and sit down."

"What about our clothes?" Olivia asked, straightening up. Cuffing her on the head as the driver opened the van door, the gun man ordered again, "Get in and sit down!"

Taking the lead, Lucas climbed in and sat down by the window. Olivia followed, curling in on herself to hide her nudity, though Lucas privately thought she didn't have anything to hide. Oh, she had a few old stretch marks, and a bit of a tummy, but nothing as disfiguring as his scars. She resisted somewhat as the driver grabbed her by the cast, and as the driver braced her arm against the seat in front, he gave her a hard look that dared her to move it.

"What –what are you doing?" Olivia asked as the man got into the front seat, picked a saw from the floor, and turned around to apply the blade to the plaster.

Hopefully, Lucas thought, the man would simply cut the cast off and throw it away without checking for devices. He watched as the man sawed carefully, then looked beyond the driver to see the gun man picking something up from the pile of clothing. It was his wallet; the gun man removed all the cash and credit cards, stuffed them into his own trousers, then tossed it away again.

"Ow!" Olivia cried, bringing Lucas' attention back to her. The driver had cut through the plaster and nicked her arm, and a tear ran down Olivia's cheek as the man removed the cast. Lucas would have been relieved to see that he didn't inspect the inside before throwing it out through the open door, except for the fact that the loss of both trackers and the microphone meant that MI-5 would now find it very difficult to follow their movements. Their only hope now was CCTV, but Lucas knew there were hundreds of these ordinary looking white vans on the road.

The gun man straightened up, then pulled the side door shut from the outside. Taking advantage of the fact that the driver was shifting seats, the gun man was getting in on the passenger side, and nobody was watching them, Lucas leaned close to Olivia and whispered, "Pretend it's really broken."

She looked at him for clarification, and he mimed cradling his arm against his body. Nodding, she did the same, and as the engine started, she even kept her left arm immobile while reaching for the seatbelt. They drove through the London streets, and Lucas steadfastly ignored the sinking feeling in his gut. The men had made no attempt to keep their prisoners from seeing their faces, or where they were going, and it could only mean one thing; that they had no intention of letting them go afterwards.

They headed in the general direction of the Thames and Lucas wondered if they were going to end up in Battersea Park, where Jeremy Owusu had died, but they pulled up just outside the north gate of Brompton Cemetery instead. They were obviously expected; the gates were opened from the inside just as the van came to a stop.

"Out," the gun man said. "Hurry."

As they stumbled out of the van, Lucas looked around for security cameras. The only one that he could see, however, had been vandalized and dangled brokenly from its perch. As the gun man hurried them in through the gate, Lucas could see that the lock had simply been sheared through. Behind them, the man who had opened the gate now pulled it shut, and the van drove off.

They were shepherded down one of the paths and into a more secluded area of the cemetery. It was the perfect place, Lucas thought, with nobody around to see what they were doing. He wondered why the terrorists had used Battersea Park before, instead of another cemetery, but maybe, after the bus fiasco, they were more worried about security now than they had been before.

A folding table had been set up in between two of the graves, and a laptop was open on it, its screen lighting the dusky surroundings with an eerie glow. A man was sitting on a folded chair at the table, but he stood up as they approached, and said, "Here. You can get dressed in this."

He handed them each a pair of pants and a T-shirt. Without asking, Lucas tucked his own pile of clothing under his arm and started to help Olivia, holding the mens' pants open for her to step into, then rolling up the T-shirt so that he could ease it over her "injured" arm. Olivia was trying desperately hard to keep up the pretense of being hurt, continuing to keep her left arm immobile, and overdoing it so that all of her joints were rigid with tension. Once he'd finished, Lucas stepped back and dressed in his own allotment of clothing. They were a bit on the small side, but it was better than running around in the nude, especially now that the wind was picking up and the clouds were coming in again.

Olivia obviously felt braver with clothes, too, because she demanded, "Where's Owen?"

"He's all right," the man said. "You spoke to him just a few minutes ago, so you know he's still alive."

"You've kidnapped Owen?" Lucas asked, then feigned indignation. "Olivia, why didn't you tell me? We could have –"

"Gone to the police?" the man interjected. "That is exactly why we did not let Olivia tell you."

His accent reminded Lucas of Lina's; the cultured English of someone who had learned it formally and very well indeed, but still couldn't hide all traces of his foreignness.

"I w-want you to bring Owen here," Olivia said, her voice quavering.

"He's coming," the man said. "It will take a few minutes for him to get here. We'll start in the meantime."

"How do we know you haven't killed him already in the meantime?" Lucas said, and Olivia gasped at the prospect. Playing for time, Lucas went on. "I don't know what you want us to do, but we're not doing anything until he's here and we know he's all right."

"He's coming," the man repeated, his voice hard. "But since we're in a hurry, I will call Owen and let you speak to him."

He picked up his mobile and dialled. "Let me speak to Owen."

To Owen, he said, "I've got your mother here, and your Uncle Scott. Tell them how much you want to go to Legoland."

Olivia stepped forward eagerly, grabbing for the mobile. "Owen? Yes, I know. I know, I want you to go to Legoland, too. And I love you, Owen. I just want you to know, I love you. No matter what happens, remember that. I love you."

She stopped speaking, and was still listening when the man took the phone away and spoke into it. "That's enough, Owen. Let me talk to Mickey now." He paused, then said more forcefully, "Owen, give the phone to Mickey."

Owen must have finally handed over the mobile to Mickey, because a moment later, the man switched to Russian and said, "If your phone rings again, shoot the boy first and then answer it."

Lucas felt a chill go down his spine, and distracted himself from it by staring at the mobile phone. From where he stood, it looked exactly like the mobile that they had given Olivia – or was it the same phone? It couldn't be, he told himself. They'd been so careful up until now, surely they would have thrown Olivia's phone away already. They probably all had the same type of mobile anyway.

Switching off, the man put the mobile back into his pocket, then looked at him and said, "Since Olivia has a broken arm, Scott, you will get to fly the drone. Sit down here."

"Drone?" Lucas asked, trying to keep to his legend as much as possible. "What drone?"

"You can tell him, Olivia," the man said, but Olivia was looking around. "Where is it?"

"It's not here," the man said. "You don't need to be right next to it to fly it, do you? Our informer tells us you can sit in London and still fly it anywhere in the world."

"Anywhere you've got satellites," Olivia corrected him, but Lucas hardly heard. The man had spoken in present tense. Did that mean they still had an informer inside Tarla? That it hadn't been Jeremy Owusu, but someone else who was still alive even now? Lucas considered who else knew so much about the drones. Mr Blaze himself, of course, and then there was the other engineer, George Kumar, who might well be in need of extra money to satisfy his two lovers. Wishing he hadn't lost the earring and could communicate his suspicions to Malcolm, Lucas groaned inwardly.

"Have you at least got the right software?" Olivia was asking. "I put the memory stick in the bag with the drone."

"We have it," the man said, indicating the side of the laptop. "Scott, sit down on this chair. Olivia, you sit down here."

He led her to a space on the grass just beyond the table and turned her around to face Lucas, then forced her down. Once seated at the laptop, all Lucas had to do was glance up in order to see her white, frightened face, and the gun man standing menacingly behind her with his weapon in his hand.

"So," Lucas asked. "You've kidnapped Owen, what exactly do you want us to do?"

"It's an assassination drone," the man said, "and you will fire it when and where I tell you."

"Who do you want to assassinate?" Lucas asked.

"It doesn't matter to you. The only thing that matters is that you fire when I tell you to, or we will kill Owen, and then Olivia, and then you."

"All right, all right, no need for any killing," Lucas told him. The man ignored his assurances, and said simply, "Now, make it fly."

Lucas turned his attention to the laptop and fired the thrusters, lifting the drone into the air. As it went up, he could see that it had been resting on top of a car, and was now in a street. The map function of the software identified it as Edwardes Square.

"Fly it west," the man told him. "Towards Holland Road. Keep it high, don't let it get in the way of any CCTV cameras, or I will tell my man to shoot Owen."

Olivia looked pleadingly at him, and Lucas said, "All right."

He guided the drone over a nearby church and across Kensington High Street, then up to Holland Road.

"A little bit farther," the man told him, and after they had passed the next intersection, he said again, "Farther."

The drone was now very close to the Georgian Embassy, Lucas realized, and wondered if someone there were the target. He couldn't remember hearing anything about any official visits from Georgian officials, though, and before the drone reached Russell Gardens, the man said, "Stop. There, right in front of the traffic light."

Lucas stopped the drone, and the man said, "Turn it so we can see what's coming up the road."

Sending the commands, Lucas fought down yet another surge of wishful thinking, hoping this time that the tracker was still in place inside the drone. It was frustrating, even terrifying, the way that the terrorists had managed to stay one step ahead of MI-5 so far. They were coming down to the last minutes of the operation now, he knew, and something had to happen soon. If it didn't, he'd be faced with a choice of doing exactly what the terrorists told him, which was killing somebody, and almost certainly being executed afterwards, or preventing the assassination of whoever the target was, and increasing his chances of being killed.

"Get it out of sight, park it up against a building or something where it won't be visible," the man said, and Lucas steered the drone to hover just under roof level of a nearby building.

"Now what?" he asked, and the man said, "Now we wait."

They waited, and after a minute or two, there was the sound of a high, boyish voice from across the cemetery. Turning towards the sound, Lucas saw a small light bobbing towards them in the rapidly falling dusk, and as it got closer, he could make out two men and a boy. Suddenly, Olivia called out, "Owen!"

"Mum!" Owen broke free of the men and ran forward, wrapping himself around her in a big hug that almost knocked her over. Lucas' heart sank as he saw that she'd instinctively put up both arms to reciprocate and was squeezing back tightly, at least until Owen fought one hand free and held up a stuffed animal. "Don't forget to hug Speedy!"

Immediately, Lucas cut the power to two of the drone's thrusters, letting it drop slowly to the ground, and called out, "We have a problem here," but it was too late. The man had already come around from behind him, and was pulling Owen away. Thrusting the child aside, he grabbed Olivia by the left wrist and began to hit her arm with the side of his hand, moving down towards her elbow with each chop and watching her reaction. "Your arm's not broken! You lied to us!"

Olivia cried out, but she sounded more surprised and indignant than injured. One of the two men who had just come to the cemetery gripped Owen's shoulder and held it.

"Stop making that pathetic noise," the man hissed to Olivia. "You couldn't act your way out of a paper sack!"

Olivia fell silent, staring guiltily up at him. The man let go of her, then pulled a gun from the holster under his arm and pointed it directly at Owen's head. "Tell me. Why did you lie to us? Why did you have a cast on your arm when it wasn't broken?"

Gulping, Olivia shot Lucas a quick, pained glance, just as Owen asked, "Is that a real gun?"

Shifting his aim just a little, the man pulled the trigger, and a bullet shot into the grass at Owen's feet. Olivia screeched in terror, and Owen jumped, staring at the man in shocked betrayal.

The man said, "Tell me, or I'll shoot him in the head!"

Olivia gasped, and Owen said, "But, Kostya, I thought you were my friend."

"The thrusters are on the blink," Lucas said quickly, shutting more of them down, but nobody was listening. Without speaking, Kostya pointed the gun at the boy's head and Lucas knew, even before Olivia flashed him a look filled with both guilt and anguish, what she was going to say.

"He told me to, he's from the government," Olivia cried, pointing at Lucas and flinging herself in front of Owen to protect him. "Don't shoot my son, please!"

xxxxx

**Section D**: Thanks for your comments, I always appreciate every word! I can't help but hoping your adrenalin is pumping even more now! (evil grin)

**leakybiro**: Tuesday has rolled on, but it's not safe to look yet, I'm afraid.

You guys might think you're the ones hanging off a cliff here, but I'm worried, too! I'm thinking of Friday's update and how you're going to like it … you might be very disappointed and feel massively let down. If I keep chewing my fingernails like this, I'm going to end up looking like the Venus de Milo!


	13. Chapter 13

Three things happened at once; one of the men tugged Olivia away from Owen, Kostya re-directed the pistol to point straight at Lucas, and his mobile rang.

"Hands up!" Kostya barked, keeping Lucas in his sights as he fumbled for his phone. "Now stand up! Olivia, you sit there!"

Lucas had expected to be killed instantly; being taken prisoner was more frightening and yet, at the same time, somewhat more hope-inspiring. They still had a chance to stop the assassination and maybe even get out alive. Submissively, he raised his hands and stood up while Olivia spent precious seconds gaping at Kostya before moving towards the chair. Finally answering the phone, Kostya snapped, "Yeah!"

He listened for a very short moment, then said, "Right."

Clicking off the conversation, Kostya laid the phone on the table, then grabbed Olivia by the arm and propelled her into the chair. "I said, sit there. The car is coming. I want you to shoot everybody in it, or I'll kill Owen very, very slowly."

"What car?" Olivia asked, sounding sick, but Lucas broke in. "Olivia, the thrusters are on the blink."

"What have you done!" Kostya raged, his eyes flicking to someone standing behind Lucas.

"Nothing!" Lucas protested, even as the man behind him hit him in the middle of the spine with the butt of his gun and made him stumble forwards one step. Still trying desperately to maintain his cover, he exclaimed, "I swear I didn't do anything!"

Kostya pushed him back and snapped, "Watch him – keep him alive!" then came around behind Olivia. "Does it work?"

"I don't know," Olivia wailed, clearly anguished. Her hands flew over the keyboard, firing the thrusters back up again, and she leaned back a little. "Yes. It works." And then she gave a little sob. "I don't want to kill anybody!"

Lucas should have known he wouldn't manage to achieve anything – Olivia was too inexperienced and too frightened to risk anything by going along with his scenario. Refusing to give in to the sense of devastation that was threatening to engulf him, Lucas sought frantically for another plan, but nothing presented itself.

"You'd rather see your son die? Get the drone back into position! The car is coming – we have to find it!" Kostya urged, and gave her a specific licence plate to look for. Olivia used one hand to focus the drone's camera.

"Can I see?" Owen asked, wriggling out of his captor's grip and pushing his way forwards, ignoring Olivia's cry of "No!" There was a little scuffle as the man tried to pull Owen back, and Owen wrenched free with such force that he fell into Kostya and knocked him off balance.

"Take the kid away," Kostya shouted in Russian, clearly annoyed. "Don't kill him, tie him to that tree so he can't bother us again – and him, too! He's valuable!"

The man propelled Lucas towards the tree in question, and he went without resisting until he heard Olivia ask, "Is that the car? There!" Then Lucas knew there was no point anymore in playing for time. It was obvious that MI-5 wouldn't be coming, and therefore, it was solely up to him to stop the assassination. Though the paths were equipped with lampposts, the rest of the cemetery was dark, and only the man who had brought Owen had a torch. Away from the light of the laptop, Lucas took his chance. Shouting, "Owen, run!" he kicked backwards with one leg, connecting solidly with flesh. The man stumbled backwards with a surprised "Ooof!" and Lucas pivoted instantly to hit the other man in the face, at the same time reaching for the gun.

"Run to the police!" Lucas gasped, grappling with the man for control of the pistol. A blow to the face knocked him back, and he struck out with his left hand, at the same time catching the man between the legs with his knee. The gun came free, and Lucas fired at the dark shape directly in front of him. Scarcely waiting for the man to drop, Lucas turned and aimed at the laptop, squeezing the trigger.

The laptop exploded in a unexpectedly blinding flash of light, an impossibly loud bang, and a streak of hot pain that bored into Lucas' collarbone. He staggered backwards, his ears ringing, tears flowing from his eyes, and his nose suddenly so full of thick mucous that he couldn't breathe through it. Trying to suck in air by mouth wasn't much better; the smoke was so acrid that it made him cough. Somebody gripped his wrist and shoved his arm above his head so that he was pointing his gun to the sky, then slammed his other fist into Lucas' stomach.

Lucas doubled over, coughing and gasping, but everything that he inhaled only choked him further. Blind, deaf, and now getting scarcely any oxygen, he was unable to resist as the man plucked the gun from his fingers. He could not even cry out in pain when the man twisted his arm behind his back, then reached for his other arm and secured them both together with a plastic tie. Giving him a shove, the man tried to make him walk, but Lucas stumbled and fell to his knees, not altogether accidentally. A moment later, there were two men, one pulling him up on each side and dragging him along.

Eventually, they stopped and settled Lucas flat on his face on the ground. Panic had already caught him, and for several moments, he was back in prison, trying to resist being waterboarded, or having his head held under water. At some point, his old mental-preservation instincts kicked in and he must started counting his breaths, because the panic receded at the same time he realized he was saying _twenty six__ Kapitolina, twenty seven Kapitolina _to himself_._ Although he had to cough then, he went right back to counting afterwards. _Twenty eight_ _Kapitolina, twenty nine Kapitolina_. It wasn't until he'd got to _forty four Kapitolina_ that he finally drew a shuddering breath, held it, and told himself firmly to exhale without saying the next number or his wife's full name. The air was clean now, his mind was clean now, he could both breathe and think again.

It wasn't the laptop exploding that had caused this, he realized, someone had used tear gas and a flashbang at the same time. Along with his breathing, the other effects were wearing off already as well; he could see enough to guess that that he was on the path under one of the lampposts, and the deep, continuous boom in his ears was slowly fading to a mere roar. The only thing that wasn't getting better was the throbbing in his left shoulder. He wanted to sit up so that he could have a look at it, but just raising his head sent a burst of agony through his chest and down his arm. Gritting his teeth, Lucas placed his cheek in the dirt again and tried to convince himself that pain was good because it meant that he was still alive.

He wondered who else was still alive. Owen? Had he run away, or had he doubled back towards his mother, straight into the circle of terrorists with their guns? Olivia? Had she already fired the drone before he'd shot the laptop, and thereby outlived her usefulness? Feeling more than hearing someone approach, Lucas looked up. A man in full SAS kit knelt down next to him and asked, "Can you hear me?"

Although it was obvious that the man was shouting, Lucas heard his voice as though he were on the other side of a door.

"Yeah!" he replied, knowing that he was shouting, too.

"I'm Sergeant Musgrave, I'm with the SAS! The operation is over! You're safe! Do you understand?"

"Yes," Lucas said, but his reply was inaudible to his own ears so he said it again more loudly. "Yes! What about Olivia and Owen? Are they all right?"

"They're safe!" Sergeant Musgrave shouted, then took out a knife. "We've established that you're not a threat! I'm going to let you go!" As he cut through the restraints, he shouted, "Are you all right?"

Lucas groaned as his arms slid down to his sides. "I think I've been shot!"

"Where?"

"Left shoulder!"

Sergeant Musgrave helped turn him over onto his back so that he could check, and Lucas saw a dark stain spreading down the front of his T-shirt.

"You'll live!" Musgrave informed him, a conclusion Lucas had already come to. "I'll get the medic!"

Lucas turned his head so that he wasn't staring directly up into the lamp, and saw several SAS soldiers moving around, clearing up the remains of the operation. There was a dark, huddled shape close to his feet, and Lucas was surprised to make out Olivia and Owen sitting on the other side of the path. Both had blankets around their shoulders, but Olivia had enveloped Owen in hers as well, hugging him close. The sight made Lucas suddenly yearn for warmth as well, not just a blanket, but a human embrace. _Lina,_ he cried out silently, but instead of Lina appearing, Olivia turned her head and looked briefly in Lucas' direction, only to glance away again as soon as their eyes met. Owen looked as well, but instead of breaking eye contact, he scrambled to his feet and came over to kneel down next to Lucas. Olivia followed more slowly, hunching down as well.

"Hallo, Uncle Scott!" Owen called out.

It was hardly the time or the place to reveal to Owen that he wasn't really his uncle, so Lucas merely called back, "Hallo, Owen! Are you all right?"

"My ears hurt and that funny gas made me sick!" the boy told him. "You're bleeding!"

"I know!"

"Does it hurt?" Without waiting for an answer, Owen said, "Here, you can have Speedy!"

Ignoring Olivia's protest, he placed his stuffed turtle directly on Lucas' chest, helping the animal to nuzzle Lucas a little before letting it sit quietly. "Do you feel better now?"

"Yes, much better!" Lucas looked over at Olivia, who obviously couldn't decide whether to be proud or mortified, and grinned to show her it was all right. "Thanks!"

She relaxed visibly, and when she wiped at one of the dark smudges on her forehead and smeared it even more, Lucas realized she'd been bleeding, too. He wondered what had happened to her face, then remembered shooting the laptop, and broke out into a cold sweat. She'd been sitting right behind it – he could have killed her instead of merely peppering her with computer shrapnel. He was glad when Sergeant Musgrave came back and spread a blanket over him, even if the man only pulled it up as high as the stuffed turtle. The medic came a few minutes later and ruffled Owen's hair with a fatherly smile before kneeling down, finding the bullet hole in Lucas' T-shirt, and ripping it open for a better look.

"You'll live!" he announced, then picked up the turtle and laid it in Lucas' hand. "Here, hold on tight! I'm gonna give you a shot for the pain and then bandage it up!"

Laughing as though at a joke, he filled a syringe, then injected it in Lucas' arm.

"You were very brave," Owen said solemnly, patting Lucas' good shoulder. "I always cry when I get a shot."

_I want a son_, Lucas suddenly found himself thinking, and realized with surprise that, although he had absolutely no idea where the wish had come from, it didn't shock him. Except for wanting to escape the torture sessions, he couldn't remember ever having desired anything so ferociously. _I want a son!_

But then Owen stood up suddenly. "I'm going to see how Mickey is!"

It seemed he would run right over Olivia, but she caught him just in time. "No, Owen, don't! He's … asleep … and we have to go home now!"

Raising her voice even louder, she demanded, "Can somebody please take us home, _right_ _now_?"

She looked pleadingly at the medic, but he was busy with bandages, and it was Sergeant Musgrave who swiftly stepped forward and escorted them away across the grass. Looking down the path, Lucas saw what she hadn't wanted Owen to discover; the body of the terrorist that he'd shot, lying close to the next lamppost.

Eventually, an ambulance arrived and whisked Lucas off to hospital where, after what seemed an interminably long wait, Lucas was examined by a female doctor who checked the wound and immediately ordered him into x-ray. "But don't worry," she told Lucas. "You'll live."

"Thanks," Lucas murmured. His ears were still humming, but he could hear her well enough. "I was wondering."

The woman smiled and gave the stuffed turtle a little squeeze. "I have kids, too." For a moment, she looked as wistful as Olivia had looked every time she'd spoken of Owen. Then she swept out, holding the door open for somebody else coming in.

"Hi." It was Tim, carrying a plastic bag. "They told me I'd find you here. How're you doing?"

"I'll live," Lucas reported. He wanted to ask about the operation, but because he couldn't discuss the details in front of the nurse, he didn't. There wasn't time, anyway.

"You'll have to step back," the nurse told Tim. "We need to get him to x-ray."

Tim raised his eyes from silent scrutiny of the turtle and stepped out of the way. Unlocking the wheels of the examination trolley, the nurse began to push it towards the door. As it rolled by, Tim plucked at Lucas' T-shirt. "I picked up your clothes from the park. Thought I'd find you here starkers, so what's this?"

The nurse, who was young enough not to have seen it all, must have given him a curious look, because Tim glanced over at her and grinned. "Don't worry, it's not what you're thinking."

The last thing that Lucas heard before he exited the room completely was, "I'll be in the waiting room, then."

The x-rays showed that the bullet had nicked the underside of Lucas' collarbone, and when the doctor extracted the bullet, she accidentally hit the bone again. Gritting his teeth and gripping the turtle against the agony, Lucas became vaguely aware that she was offering the misshapen piece of metal to him as a souvenir, and shook his head. But then the worst was over, and there was hardly any pain when the doctor stitched up the wound. While she was bandaging it, she sent the nurse to fetch a sling for Lucas. It looked exactly like the one Olivia had been wearing, and he smiled inwardly a little at the reversal of their roles.

After dabbing some antibiotic salve on his ear and giving him a list of medical instructions, the doctor went on to the next patient, and the nurse went out to fetch Tim. The younger man came in, unpacked the clothes, then stepped back and watched as the nurse helped Lucas dress.

"So," he finally said when the nurse had finished and left the room. "Home or grid?"

"Grid," Lucas said, walking towards the door, and added, "The keys to my flat are in my locker there."

"Don't forget your turtle," Tim said with a little smile, waiting until Lucas had turned and then tossing it at him. Lucas' reflexes were not a hundred percent, however, and he didn't quite manage to catch it.

"Sorry," Tim said. Coming forward to pick it up, he asked, "Where'd you get this, anyway?"

"Owen gave it to me," Lucas said. A slightly weaker version of his earlier desire for a son washed over him as he took the toy back.

"Sweet kid," Tim remarked. "I wouldn't have given away my teddy bear just like that. 'Course, I didn't carry it around when I was nine years old, either. I kept it hidden under my bed until it was lights out and nobody could see me hugging it."

Lucas waited until they were in the car before asking, "Did you find out who the target was? Did we stop the assassination in time?"

"Oh, yeah, we got there in time," Tim said. "The target was Lado Gurgenidze, Prime Minister of Georgia."

"Gurgenidze?" Lucas asked. "I didn't know he was in London."

"It was an open secret," Tim said. "Half holiday, half looking up old friends from his banking days – you know he lived in London for a few years? No, maybe you didn't know. It must have been around the time you were arrested. Anyway, he worked in corporate finance and investment banking before he went back to Georgia after the Rose Revolution. Apparently he spent the week quietly trying to convince his old contacts to invest more heavily in Georgia."

"And the Russians wanted him dead?"

"Certain elements inside Russia," Tim clarified. "Elements that want more Russian investment in Georgia. Elements that apparently have connections with the Mafia to help them get what they want."

"Money," Lucas said with a sigh.

"The root of all evil," Tim said. "Mind you, I wouldn't complain if I had roots like that."

"The _love _of money is the root of all evil," Lucas corrected him wearily.

"Didn't I just say that?" Tim didn't wait for an answer, but went on. "There must have been a pretty big leak in Georgian security for the Russians to have found out his movements. They arrived on Monday morning – and the first attempt was that evening, remember? To-night was their last chance to get him, too, they're flying back home in a couple of hours."

"They?"

"He brought his family along, and to-night, he had his wife and two of his three kids in the car with him."

Lucas thought of Owen, another child in danger, and swore quietly. Tim nodded in agreement. "Yeah."

When they arrived at the Grid, Harry was speaking to Connie, but looked up to say, "Well, Lucas, glad to see you've escaped almost certain death yet again."

"How did you find us?" Lucas asked. "They left the trackers and and the two-way in my earring back in Ravenscourt Park."

"It never ceases to amaze me," Harry remarked, "how often a tiny little mistake is responsible for an operation going wrong. Thankfully, this mistake was on their side."

"When we registered a call on Olivia's mobile after losing contact with both of you, we knew it had to be one of them," Connie explained. "We triangulated the location and sent in the SAS. The CCTV helped a little, too, especially once we realized that the camera near Brompton Cemetery had been deliberately tampered with, late this afternoon."

"From what I heard, the SAS got there just in time," Tim said. "Imagine being killed in a cemetery."

Harry gave him a look of forced tolerance. "I'm sure there are worse places, Tim."

Tiny little mistakes. Lucas thought of his infected ear and how he'd managed to divert attention from it, and Olivia's involuntary betrayal of her non-broken arm and the way it had almost got them all killed. That particular memory jogged another one in his mind, and he said, "Harry, there could still be an informer inside Tarla. Something that one of the Russians said—"

But Harry was already nodding, looking sad. "Yes," he said, cutting Lucas off. "Adam and Ben brought in Peter Blaze just half an hour ago."

"Mr Blaze?" Lucas was genuinely surprised, then silently told himself off for assuming, even for one moment, that it had to be George. Especially in the universe of espionage, things were never what they seemed.

"That's where the money trail led, once we looked deeper than Jeremy Owusu." Connie clarified. "He never saw a penny of it; the payments were all faked."

"Adam stopped Peter Blaze from committing suicide," Harry added. "It seems he thought he was only supplying a bit of information here and there, and covering his tracks so well that he'd never be discovered and have to face the consequences of what he was doing. His arrest came as a bit of a surprise."

Lucas remembered Olivia's words of praise about Tarla's CEO, and the note he'd found while snooping in Olivia's bedroom earlier that morning. _Please return to Tarla Industries_ _and tell Mr Blaze I'm sorry_. It enraged him to think of Olivia feeling she had to apologize to him in case of her death, when it seemed Mr Blaze was responsible for everything she'd gone through lately.

"Lucas?" Harry asked, and Lucas realized it was the second time Harry had spoken to him. He met the shorter man's eyes, and Harry said, "Get some coffee if you want, and I'll see you in my office when you're ready."

Lucas exchanged his Scott Fenton identity for his real one. He did it slowly in a ritual he'd developed long ago, setting aside each piece of his alter ego one by one and silently telling it good-bye. So long, Scott, see you around. When that was complete, he then picked up each separate part of his own life and greeted it. Hallo, Lucas, welcome back. At last the ritual was complete and he was truly himself again. Making a mental note to return Olivia's keys the next day, along with the turtle, Lucas decided to forego the coffee and take a long, cool drink of water from the cooler instead. He hadn't realized he'd been so parched. Filling the cup again, he carried it into Harry's office.

"Tell me what happened once we lost contact with you," Harry invited, and Lucas told him. Harry listened, occasionally asking a question for clarification, but mostly just absorbing the facts that Lucas laid out for him. When Lucas had finished, Harry nodded.

"Right, then, I don't want to see you again until Tuesday," he said.

"Tuesday!" Lucas exclaimed, and Harry gave him a look that promised trouble if he even thought about coming in earlier. With a little sigh, he gave in. "If you insist."

He was about to stand up and go when Harry asked, quite unexpectedly, "Any problems? Any … flashbacks?"

"No!" Lucas exclaimed, fear jolting through him. If he admitted he'd had a "moment," Harry might well confine him to a desk job, safe but boring, for the rest of his career. It wouldn't matter if he'd managed to get himself back to normal again, if he'd stopped his obsessive-compulsive counting on his own and calmed himself down, Harry and the others would still be over-protective to the point of smothering him. It would be like wearing a sign around his neck that proclaimed him to be broken – irreparable, even – for the rest of his life. Taking a deep breath, Lucas said more calmly, "No, Harry. No flashbacks. Nothing to worry about."

"No flashbacks, or nothing to worry about?" Harry asked more pointedly, but Lucas didn't hesitate and repeated quite firmly, "No flashbacks."

"All right," Harry said, and even gave Lucas a diplomatic smile. It chilled him to the bone.

xxxxx

Please, please, _please_ tell me if this part was unrealistic or a letdown in any way!

There will be two more parts and then the story will be finished. Thank you so much for sticking with me all this time.

**Section D**: How could I leave it like that? _I _didn't have any problems doing so because _I _knew the rest of the story, nyah nyah nyah! (wink)

**leakybiro**: Oh, I _could _do much more to them, but I'm just too nice for my own good, which is my tragic failing, I suppose. And yeah, I was spot-on about the fish and chips part for TV Lucas, wasn't it? You should have seen me after I watched that part – I was grinning all over for hours afterwards, feeling like I'd just scored a huge point somewhere! I don't know what to think about Elizabeta yet, though. There are so many unanswered questions there!


	14. Chapter 14

Lucas' flat had never seemed so devoid of life, not even before he'd moved in, when it had been almost completely empty of furniture. It was like returning to his cell after a visit from Aleksander Dmitrovich, his sense of loneliness twice as bad once he'd been removed from the presence of others and sent back to isolation. If only he had a key to Lina's flat and could just sneak in, not disturbing her at all, but simply taking comfort from the fact that she was there. Lucas hadn't wanted to leave the grid and the presence of the people there, but Connie had offered him a lift home, and he'd felt Harry's eye upon him, all but daring him to show his weakness by refusing.

Instead of going straight to bed, as he'd intended, Lucas wandered into his living room instead and turned on the stereo, searching until he found a radio station playing an audio drama. He turned the volume down just until he could hear the voices but no longer make out the individual words, then sank down on the couch and leaned his head back. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine himself at a party, a reception at an embassy perhaps, or the intermission at a theatre, with people speaking in low tones all around him. He dreamed that Lina was there, too, wearing that emerald green dress that brought out the colour of her eyes, and looking brightly at him in anticipation of going home and letting him unzip it.

The pain in his shoulder woke him the next morning, and he twisted himself carefully into what he hoped would be a better position. The ringing in his ears had finally gone away, and when the better position turned out to be worse than the first, he could clearly hear himself groan. Defeated, he sat up, rested a moment, then got to his feet and wandered into the bathroom.

Once he'd cleaned up and struggled into clean clothes, Lucas went into the kitchen and looked in the fridge. The open bottle of champagne was still there, quite undrinkable now, but the sight was enough to give him an idea. After an hour's journey by foot, bus, and tube, he approached Lina's tiny terraced house carrying two bags of shopping, and rang the bell.

It took so long before the intercom beeped that Lucas began to wonder if Lina were even home. He raised his hand to ring again, and just as he did, Lina's voice came through with a crackle. "Lucas? What is it?"

"I've brought breakfast," he said, holding up his shopping bags and smiling up at the security camera.

There was a rattle as Lina drew back the security chain, and then she opened the door. She was wearing a thin silk kimono that was not properly done up and revealed short silk pyjamas underneath. Lucas stared at her flat figure, trying to imagine her pregnant, then realized that Lina had asked, "What happened to your arm?"

"Oh … " Lucas dragged his mind back to the present. "I got shot. Can I come in?"

Lina did up the chain again and moved towards the stairs. "Go through to the kitchen, then, and I'll get dressed."

"You don't have to get dressed because of me," Lucas said. "Come sit down and let's eat."

But Lina went upstairs anyway, and Lucas sighed. In the kitchen, he opened all the cabinets to look for champagne flutes, but didn't find any, and widened his search to include the living room. The room looked so different – so bare, he thought – devoid of all the stuffed animals and knick knacks that Lina had collected over the years. When she'd moved house in February, she'd either given or thrown them all away. She hadn't mentioned where they'd ended up, and Lucas hadn't asked, nor had he asked about any of the photos and portraits she no longer displayed.

Finding the glasses just as he heard her come down the steps, Lucas stepped out into the hall. Lina was wearing the most boring and shapeless combination of sweat pants and oversized T-shirt that Lucas had ever seen. To cover his disappointment, he smiled, and said in Russian, "I hope I didn't wake you up."

"I was awake, I was just not certain if I wanted to get up," Lina replied in English, leading the way into the kitchen. Sliding into one of the chairs, she opened the first bag and, still speaking English, asked, "What did you bring?"

Setting the champagne flutes on the table, Lucas sat down as well and watched as she unpacked the various foods he'd picked out from the shop that morning. Then she opened the second bag, took out the bottle of champagne, and gave him a look that was both wary and quizzical.

"It's for medicinal purposes," Lucas told her with a wink. He tried to pop the cork, but after watching him struggle one-handedly for a moment, Lina reached over and took the bottle from him. Expertly divesting it of the stopper, she poured, and handed him a glass, then took her own and waited.

Lucas raised his flute, looking at her over the rim. Was it just his imagination, or was she truly regarding him with worry and suspicion? He smiled again in an attempt to put her at her ease, and said, "A toast to me. I have survived my first week at work and my first undercover mission since I've been back!"

Lina's wary expression relaxed, and she clinked her glass against his. "To Lucas! Congratulations!"

They sipped, and then Lucas said, "I've got my life back. Well, most of it, anyway. There's just one piece missing, and that's you, Lina. I want you to be my wife again. I want to marry you again. I want to have a son, and maybe even a daughter, too –"

"Lucas," Lina interrupted, and he stopped, hoping just for a moment that she was about to give him the answer he wanted. She bit her lip, then glanced away and murmured, "When I said you should ask me later, I was thinking of months, maybe even years."

"Months?" Lucas repeated, stunned. "Years? Lina, why? Why don't you want to come back to me now?"

Lina sighed. "Because you need so much and I have nothing to give, Lucas. I'm empty!"

Lucas just stared at her, and after a long silence, she went on. "I can act like I'm all right, most of the time, but it's so hard, especially when I'm with you! When I leave you, I am exhausted from pretending! I want someone to … to give me love and help me through the bad times, and you can't, Lucas! You can't!"

"I can love you," Lucas said. "I do love you! I can give you what you need, Lina!"

"No," Lina protested softly. "Oh, Lucas, can't you understand? It's worse when you're there! Then I have to watch everything I say and do so that I don't hurt you and make things worse. Every time I mention Nick, you get that look on your face – yes, that one!"

Lucas hadn't realized he was frowning, and glanced away. He understood exactly what Lina was saying, because he'd also caught himself watching everything he said and did around her, but he hadn't expected to hear it from her, and it hurt. He'd thought … but obviously he'd been wrong.

"Do you have nightmares, Lucas?" Lina asked suddenly.

"Yeah," he admitted. "Sometimes."

"Do you want somebody to be there for you, hold you, and tell you it will be all right, that it was just a dream?" She didn't wait for his answer, but went on. "Well, so do I!"

"We could help each other," Lucas said.

"We're both broken!" Lina shouted.

"I'm not!" Lucas shouted back. "I'm not broken anymore!"

"Then you won't mind waiting for a year or two to see if I even want to get married again!" Lina screeched.

"What?"

Lina lowered her voice. "I said, you won't mind waiting a year or two to see if I even want to get married again."

"Why wouldn't you want to get married?" Lucas demanded. "We were married once and it was great, why wouldn't you want it back?"

"Because I've moved on," Lina said. "I've grown away from you and even though I'm still fond of you, I've become a different person. You would still expect me to be like I was eight years ago, but I've changed!"

"How?" Lucas demanded. "How have you changed?"

"You said you wanted a son and maybe even a daughter?" Lina asked. "You haven't asked about my job – I just found out yesterday that I got a promotion."

"A promotion?" Lucas repeated, feeling stupid.

"Yes, a promotion! I wanted children with you, but that didn't work out. And I wanted children with Nick, but when that didn't work out either, I turned my attention to my job, Lucas. I had so many years to get used to the idea of not having kids. Now I've got the promotion that I wanted, and suddenly, you come in and want to change everything! You didn't say congratulations! You never even ask about my job!"

Lucas stared at her, not knowing what to say. It was too late for congratulations now, and she was right, he never asked about her job, but that was because she always told him all about it anyway. Or at least, he'd always thought she told him everything. Obviously, she'd been keeping something back.

"Oh, Lucas." Lina sighed and picked up a bread roll, turning it in her fingers. "How would you like it if your father came back to life and expected you to be the same person you were when you were at university?"

"He wouldn't," Lucas said. "He's really dead, he can't come back. Anyway, Lina, we've had time to get used to each other again. I wouldn't expect you to be the same!"

"You were away for eight years, Lucas! I thought you were really dead, I thought you couldn't come back! And now that you're here, we've seen each other once a week for six months. We haven't had time to get used to each other again."

"It's been seven months," Lucas corrected her. "And whose fault is that, Lina? I wanted to see you every day – and I still do! I wanted to marry you again the first day I saw you – and I still do!"

Lina ripped the bread roll apart with unusual violence. "Do you even know what day it is to-day?"

Lucas hesitated, wondering what he'd missed. "No."

"It's the anniversary of the day I first met Nick," she said, and Lucas groaned audibly. "Lina, don't."

"Oh, yes, I will," she retorted. "It's what I was thinking about when I woke up this morning, when I didn't want to get out of bed. I was remembering how we met. The girls from work had talked me into going to a pub with them and singing karaoke, and Nick was there."

"You sang karaoke?" Lucas asked, trying to focus on something else besides that man's name. Normally Lina was so embarrassed about her lack of singing ability that she never even hummed.

"I'd been drinking," she said. "I might have been a little drunk. So I sang, and Nick came up to me later. He never said a word about my singing, just raved about what a good dancer I was."

Lucas took a large drink of champagne, feeling jealousy and anger rising within him.

"He wasn't much of a dancer, not like you, but he could be so much fun, and I still miss him! I miss what we had together!" Lina exclaimed.

Wanting to vomit, Lucas asked, "Are you telling me this to hurt me?"

"No, I'm telling you this so that you'll understand that I've changed," Lina said. "I think about different things now. You come along, with your breakfast and your champagne, and you want me to go back to being the same girl I was eight years ago. You're talking about kids the way we used to back then, you expect me to love you the same way as I did back then, you think my career is only as important to me as it was back then, you just want to ignore everything that happened in the meantime …"

"Did you love him more than me?" Lucas asked before he could stop himself.

Lina shook her head. "No, I loved him differently, and I grieved differently for both of you."

"So you don't want to marry me again because you're still in love with – with him?" Lucas couldn't bring himself to say the man's name.

"I loved him," Lina said. "I don't know if I'm still in love with him. Sometimes I feel like I hate him, but other times, I miss him. But I think the main reason I don't want to marry you right now is because I've changed over the years. You remember me when I was strong and brave, Lucas, but now I'm weak and I'm scared and I don't want to get hurt again! I thought you were dead. I know that Nick is. Sometimes when I think about loving you again, I'm scared that as soon as I do, you'll get killed and really be dead, and I'll see your body like I saw Nick's! I don't want to have to do any more grieving, Lucas, I just can't go through that again!"

"I won't get killed," Lucas said, but Lina jabbed her finger towards his shoulder. "How close did that bullet come to your heart?"

He looked away, unable to answer, and Lina said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I can't give you what you need. I'm sorry that I want to be with someone who will tell me it's all right to grieve for Nick, who will understand that I really did love him, who won't freeze up and pretend that part of my life never happened. I'm sorry that I want to be with someone who will worry about me, not someone that I have to worry about if he's five minutes late coming home! I'm sorry that I can't be the way you want me, and I'm sorry that I'm selfish and weak and scared!"

"I'm sorry, too," Lucas said, then realized he wasn't sorry at all. He was angry – no, furious – at Lina for rejecting him, at Nick for having come into her life under false pretences, at everything and everybody who had unknowingly conspired to rip him apart from his life and his wife. He even felt a wave of fury directed at Aleksander Dmitrovich for holding him prisoner for so long. Standing up, he threw his champagne flute across the kitchen, where it hit one of the cabinets and shattered in a glorious explosion of glass. Lina cried out and shrank back in her chair as he glared at her, no doubt fearing he might lash out, although he'd never, ever do anything to hurt her, not even after what she had just done to him.

There was nothing more for him to say, and no more reason to stay, and so he simply walked out, ignoring the sound behind him of Lina starting to cry. He was still angry enough to slam the door behind him, hard enough to shake the entire house, and to stomp the entire way to the train station despite the pain that the rough motion caused his shoulder.

xxxxx

**Section D**: So glad you liked the part where Lucas realized he wanted a son. Didn't mean for you to get teary-eyed, though your reaction is very flattering. (beams happily) Does Harry only guess, or does he know that Lucas isn't telling the truth? Well, he's an experienced Spook and he knows Lucas well, that's all I'm saying.

**leakybiro**: Thanks for thinking this is believable and current, just like an episode of Spooks. And I'm so glad you didn't think that last part was a let-down. I was very worried that it might be much too convenient. Whew!

Only one more part left, and then this story will be over. The thought of not getting any more feedback from you guys make _me_ teary-eyed!


	15. Chapter 15

Lucas' mobile telephone rang, and he clicked it on, then snarled, "What!"

"And good morning to you, too." It was one of the desk workers from Section D. "I've got a message to pass on to you from Olivia Stephens."

"Go on," Lucas said, moderating his voice slightly.

"She asks if you still have her car keys and can you bring them over as soon as possible. Apparently she lost the spare key a long time ago."

"Yeah, I've got them. I'm on my way," Lucas said, and hung up. He had to go home first, to get the stuffed turtle, and the journey across the city gave him enough time to master his anger, or at least lock it away. His private life had nothing to do with Olivia or Owen, and they shouldn't have to suffer because of it. By the time he reached their street in Acton, he was almost completely back in Scott Fenton mode again.

When he rang the bell, he could hear running footsteps inside the house, and then the door was flung open to reveal Owen. "Hallo, Uncle Scott! Have you got the keys?"

Coming up behind him, Olivia didn't look at Lucas as she said, "Owen, I've told you, it's not Uncle Scott. He was just pretending to be Uncle Scott to catch the bad men."

"Well, have you got the keys?" Owen demanded, and Lucas, who had been hiding the stuffed turtle behind his sling, pulled it out.

"Yes, I do, but I wanted to give this back first and say thank you."

"Speedy!" Owen cried, ripping it out of his hand and squeezing it tightly. "He can come with me! Thanks for bringing him back, Uncle Scott!"

Olivia sighed. Lucas fished everything out of his pocket and extended it to her. "Here you are; house keys, car keys, and, uh, my keys, too."

Reaching over Owen's shoulder, Olivia picked out what was hers. "Thank you," she said, turning red and glancing away as her fingers touched his hand. Her self-consciousness was contagious, reminding Lucas of her horror and his embarrassment when she'd seen the really bad scars on his back. As he so often did while on assignment, however, he squashed his true feelings as soon as they came up. "Did you get everything else back then, last night?"

"Yes," Olivia replied, still not looking at him. "Chris brought everything to the cemetary for us, and then he drove us home, too."

"Even your jewelry?" Lucas asked, making a gesture at his neck that Olivia didn't see. She nodded and murmured, "Mm hmm."

Then suddenly she raised her eyes to his face and blurted out, "I'm so sorry I told them you were from the government!"

"It's all right," Lucas reassured her. "You were under duress, and I would have done exactly the same if I'd been in your position."

He couldn't blame her at all; she was an engineer, not an officer at MI-5. She hadn't been trained for that kind of thing, and he'd already known she'd do anything for her son. Smiling to show her she was forgiven, Lucas watched as Olivia relaxed in obvious relief.

"We can go now, right, mum?" Owen said, breaking into the conversation at the worst possible moment. Turning to Lucas, Owen said, "We're going to Legoland to-day!"

"That's brilliant," Lucas told him. "I'll bet you've been looking forward to it all week."

"Yes!" Owen's naturally cheerful face took on a slightly annoyed facet. "Mickey kept telling me we'd go, but we never did. Mum says Mickey and Kostya and the others were bad people for lying to me, but now she's going to take me, so it'll be all right."

"Well, I hope you'll have fun, but can you wait five minutes?" Lucas turned his attention back to Olivia and asked, "I think I've still got my things here?"

"Oh! Yes, of course. Come in." She motioned for Lucas to go up the stairs, and as she followed, she said, "I just moved the suitcase to one side, I didn't touch anything."

"That's fine," Lucas reassured her.

"Do you want to see what I built?" Owen asked, racing up the steps and squeezing past Lucas in his haste to get to his bedroom first.

"He seems to be taking this quite well," Lucas said over his shoulder.

"Yes," Olivia replied. "They wanted to send a psychologist around to talk to him to-day, but I said, if he has to wait one more day to go to Legoland after all those promises, then he really will be in need of professional help, and so will I! So they're going to come on Monday." She sighed a little. "But from what Owen tells me, they didn't treat him badly. They spoiled him, really; they let him watch television all day, or play on the internet, and they even got him a huge box of Lego that he didn't want to leave behind."

"And how are you holding up?" At the top of the stairs, he turned for a closer look at her face. Her hair almost hid a bandage across her forehead, and there were also a few, less serious cuts on her left cheek that had already scabbed over.

"Now that I've got Owen back, I'm fine," she said, but her smile had a slightly brittle quality to it. Lucas wondered if she'd started having nightmares already.

Owen appeared in the doorway of his bedroom, holding his huge creation. "Look! It's a space ship that goes to Mars!"

"And will there be Martians there?" Lucas asked.

"Oh, yes, lots of them! But they're friendly! They don't have guns, or lasers or anything like that. Do you know what? They have their own version of Legoland, and they call it Earthland!" Owen pointed to part of the space ship. "There's supposed to be a thing here for a telescope here, but it fell off."

"Was it blue?" Lucas asked, and when Owen nodded, he said, "Did you look under the bed?"

Owen put the space ship down to check, and Lucas slipped by him to inspect the contents of his bags. Everything was just as he'd left it yesterday, ready to go.

"Here it is!" Owen cried, straightening up and replacing the missing Lego. "Have you got your things, Uncle Scott?"

"Owen," Olivia said warningly, but Lucas just gave them both a smile. "Yes, I've got my things."

"So now we can go, right?"

"Now we can go," Olivia affirmed.

Owen launched himself into the air as though he were a rocket himself and thundered down the stairs.

"Don't forget, we have to get the car first!" Olivia called after him. "And you'd better go to the toilet, too!"

"Don't have to go!" Owen shouted back.

Lucas slung his carry-on bag over his good shoulder and reached for his suitcase, but Olivia grabbed it first. "Here, let me get that."

"It's all right, I can manage," Lucas said, placing his hand over hers on the handle, but then the strap of his carry-on bag slipped down his arm. Olivia raised her eyebrows and indicated his sling. "Next you're going to be all manly and tell me it's just a flesh wound, right?"

Lucas smiled at the phrase "all manly," then let go of the suitcase and offered her the carry-on. "You can take this, then."

Hanging on to the outside of the banister and swinging himself back and forth, Owen watched them come down the stairs. "Uncle Scott, have you ever been to Legoland?"

"Owen, how many times do I have to tell you, he's not Uncle Scott!" Olivia exclaimed in exasperation.

"Sorry," Owen said. "But have you ever been?"

"No, I never have," Lucas told him, thinking that he'd certainly have to go as soon as he had kids of an age to enjoy it.

"Do you want to come? Can he come with us, mum, please?"

Surprised, Lucas and Olivia glanced at each other.

Hesitantly, Olivia said, "He might not want to, Owen. You can see he's been hurt, he might want to just go home and rest."

A myriad of thoughts ran through Lucas' mind in a mere second; foremost among them were his empty flat, his fight with Lina, his jealousy of her feelings for her second husband, and a decision born of sheer contrariness, that if she could get together with someone else, then so could he. Looking directly into Olivia's eyes so that he could see her reaction, Lucas said, "Actually, I'd love to come, but –"

He hesitated ever so slightly, watching her face. If she showed any signs of rejection, he would make an excuse to leave immediately, but instead, her eyes brightened a little and her expression softened. Encouraged, he continued, "—only if it's all right with you."

"I don't mind," Olivia said, obviously trying to sound indifferent and bite back the smile that was tugging on her lips. "Funny, I've kind of got used to having you around."

Then she lowered her voice warningly and added, "But don't call me sis. Or Livvy."

"I wouldn't dare, you might hit me where it hurts," Lucas replied with a laugh, and Olivia smiled shyly, too.

"So you're coming?" Owen asked. "Brilliant!"

"I'm coming," Lucas said. "And you can call me Lucas, by the way. Lucas North."

The End

xxxxx

**Section D**: So glad you liked the last part. I was very worried, but it seems to have gone over well. Thanks so much for sticking with me through the entire fic and always replying!

**leakybiro**: I'm so pleased you thought my characters were three-dimensional! And I am shy of showing the darker sides of people, so that last chapter was a real challenge for me. Maybe it will be easier for me next time. Thank you so much for all your help and support, and your replies for each chapter.

And thank you, too, everybody who's lurked this far. I hope you all kept reading because you liked it!


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